


Stardust on my Sleeve

by Dr_Sarah_Calvin



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, M/M, Porn With Plot, Post-Star Trek (2009), Pre-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Unrequited Love, mckirk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:19:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Sarah_Calvin/pseuds/Dr_Sarah_Calvin
Summary: When the conclusion to an away mission goes awry, Dr. Leonard McCoy and Jim Kirk have to confront more than just the impossible odds of survival. Or: How Bones stopped worrying and learned to love the shuttle. A McKirk fic.**Warning** I pull no punches. Do not read if you can't handle graphic depictions of blood/gore/injuries/dead bodies.





	1. Chapter 1

 

The first thing Leonard noticed was a gentle tap on his right cheek.

His mind was still a confused blur, and for a time he drifted in and out of consciousness, with the rhythmic tapping the only thing grounding him back in reality. As the rest of his senses gradually focused, he heard creaking metal accompanied by the distant sound of howling wind, and the occasional deep rumble of a thunderclap. He felt dull, throbbing pain everywhere, but mostly concentrated in his head and his gut. Acrid smoke made his nostrils twitch and he caught the scent of something else he was quite familiar with as a surgeon.

 

_Tap._

 

_Tap._

 

He cracked open his eyes and couldn’t figure out which way was up or down. It was dark and the only thing he could make out was crumpled metal and frayed wires. Somehow, Leonard’s hips were angled higher than his torso, and now he could feel the pull of gravity in the form of the shuttle’s safety harness digging into his shoulders. The tapping on his face was liquid and warm, dripping from somewhere above, and he was too weak to understand this inverted barrage of sensation. His head swam and for a moment, he fought back a wave of nausea that made him break out in a cold sweat. White spots danced in his field of vision and he felt himself sliding back towards unconsciousness.

 

 _Tap_.

 

 _Tap_.

 

_Tap._

 

Leonard jerked awake. It was significantly colder now, and he shivered as he regained true awareness this time, the memories flooding back. The freak blizzard, the lightning strike to the nacelle of their shuttlecraft, Jim telling McCoy, Baquero and Horovitz to strap themselves in as they plummeted, and the captain courageously doing everything in his power to maintain control. Everything Leonard had always feared had come to life in one agonizing chain of events. At a certain point Jim had glanced back at him, his vibrant blue eyes full of determination, fear, and contrition, as if to personally apologize for the whole situation, even as he was simultaneously using that brilliant mind and his keen command instinct to plot a strategy to save them. All the things unsaid between them, everything Leonard had been putting off since their first awkward meeting on a more stable shuttlecraft, had come to his lips and died there, because it was the worst possible moment to mention any of that. They were all going to die, and there wasn’t time to say everything he should have said or done what he should have done ages ago while they were still in the Academy, like kiss that goddamn cocky, teasing pout right off of Jim’s impossibly handsome face. He’d never wanted to ruin their friendship, the deep bond they’d slowly cemented over time, and in their last moments together, that affection blazed like a furnace and outshone his unrequited lust. All he’d done to encapsulate this overwhelming myriad of feelings was desperately shout Jim’s name and reach for him, and looking back it seemed appropriate. Jim had always been just slightly out of reach.

After that, his memory disintegrated into thunder, pain, and agonized screams. Maybe his own; he wasn’t certain.

The steady tapping on his face drew him out of his reverie. Slowly, Leonard brought up the hand that had been dangling behind him in empty space to his head, his sore muscles protesting the movement, and his fingers touched a slick, sticky mess that dribbled from his cheek to his temple and congealed in his hair. A solitary drop splashed on the back of his hand. When he brought his hand in front of his eyes, he couldn’t seem to get them to focus in the dim light. His fingers were red with blood.

 The sight of it immediately made him hyperaware and he panicked at the thought that he hadn’t heard from either Jim, Horovitz, or Baquero at all. Any of them might be bleeding out somewhere right above him as he sat there in a fucking daze. Leonard needed to get moving. He looked around and tried to figure out how he was situated. He couldn’t see the cockpit from his vantage point because of the collapsed bulkhead in front of him. It appeared that in the crash, the shuttle had crumpled upwards, curving back in on itself, and his seat was nearly upside-down. His bottom half disappeared into the twisted debris above but he could still see the release button for his harness. He tried wiggling his feet to make sure they weren’t trapped, paralyzed or crushed. No injuries there. Good. Next, he attempted to shimmy his legs out from under the wreckage, and choked out a strangled cry.

 Stabbing pain radiated from his lower abdomen. He had unzipped the jacket of his insulated survival suit as soon as they had gotten back inside the comfortable heat of the shuttle, right before they had taken off, and it was hanging open, leaving his black thermal undershirt exposed. His left arm was positioned upwards, tight against his side, his hand curled around a piece of cold, jagged metal that jutted from the crushed bulkhead into the line of skin between the hem of his shirt and his belt, just to the right of his inguinal crease. Blood from the wound had soaked into his shirt and was seeping down the underside of a tangle of wires, collecting on the corner of a piece of debris that hung over his face. As he watched, the beads of blood pooled together, slowly becoming a full, trembling drop that tenuously clung to the edge until gravity won out, then abruptly fell to his cheek.

 

_Tap._

 

Leonard flinched and breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. If he wasn’t pinned in place, he might have a chance at survival, at least long enough to help his fellow crewmen. He felt for his medkit at his side. It was still held there by its shoulder strap, thank God. Very carefully, he un-clenched his hand from the site of his injury and reached over his torso to help turn the pack at an angle to keep his medical equipment from falling out. The movement tugged on his abdominal muscles and Leonard hissed. He pulled his hypospray out of the kit and dug for the vials stored at the bottom. It took a few attempts to find the right one and he was panting and dripping with sweat by the time he had it loaded. Pressing the hypospray into the flesh by the wound, he injected himself with a localized anaesthetic and waited. It was a tricky spot. Too high a dosage and he wouldn’t be able to feel his legs, rendering himself useless, too low and he’d be in too much pain to find Jim and the others. He purposefully went light on the dose just to be safe. Once he felt it take hold, he secured the hypo in its case and craned his head back, trying to see what was behind him. The other seats were at an angle, mostly intact, and he didn’t see anything too dangerous. If he unbuckled the harness, he might be able to use gravity to his advantage and simply slide down off of whatever had impaled him. It wasn’t the optimal solution to his predicament, but he didn’t exactly have a choice.

 Gritting his teeth, Leonard counted down, then pressed the clasp that released the safety harness. No longer restrained, his body sagged downwards. There was slight resistance and he felt a twinge deep in his gut, then excruciating pain. He hollered at the top of his lungs, sounding remarkably like his 8 year old daughter, then he was free, and he tried to cling to the chair, scrabbling for purchase on the pleather material, but he ultimately didn’t have the strength. He went tumbling backwards, reflexively tucking his head under his arms. Ricocheting off of another chair and slamming into the floor, he slid down the inclined aisle, ending up at the back of the shuttle. He laid there in a trembling ball of misery, bruised and scraped and a general mess, his unkempt, blood-soaked hair plastered against his eyes.

 There was little time to worry about new injuries. He clamped a hand over the jagged puncture wound, which was bleeding freely now. Fumbling around for his medkit, he finally found it wedged underneath him, pulled out a tube of sterilization gel and rubbed it inside the slippery, exposed flesh as best he could, grimacing. He could feel how deep the trauma went, and knew that field dressings and even the emergency tissue regenerator in the shuttlecraft’s first aid kit wouldn’t be appropriate for this kind of injury, if the kit had even survived. He probably had internal injuries that needed surgery he was unable to perform on himself. The best he could do was close up the wound to stop the hemorrhaging and try to go find the others.

 Leonard pinched the edges of the ragged skin together with shaking fingers, a harsh, guttural groan wrung out of him as he nano-sutured it with a laser. When the wound was sealed, he did his best to wipe away the blood with his shirt and injected a dose of some strong antibiotics at the site to hold off infection. He then applied an adhesive pad. After he was finished he laid back, panting, and struggled to stay conscious, riding out the light-headed spell until it faded away. He had lost a lot of blood and gave himself a hypo of a marrow booster that would speed up his body’s production of hemoglobin. Eventually, Leonard slowly sat up by degrees, and for the first time got a good look at the wreckage around him.

 “Jim?!?” he called out, his voice hoarse from all the full throated screaming he’d done. “Lieutenant Baquero?!? Lieutenant Horovitz?!?”

 No answer. Just the rush of wind outside the hull. The temperature had dropped significantly inside the shuttle as conditions from outside leaked in - Leonard could see his breath puffing out in the icy air- and he was glad they had dressed in rugged survival suits before coming down to the planet. He hoped that along with the first aid kit, the rest of their survival gear was intact. Zipping up his jacket against the chill, he unclipped his communicator from his belt and flipped it open.

 “McCoy to Kirk. Do you copy?”

 Jim didn’t answer, and the static coming out of the comm sounded odd, humming in discordant frequencies. It was the ions, Leonard remembered. That was why they couldn’t beam down and had to take a shuttle in the first place. The exact physics kind of went over his head, but some planets had too many ions in their atmosphere and it messed with transmissions and electronics. Especially during storms.

 “Lt Baquero?” He waited. “Lt Horovitz. ...Anyone?!?” When there still wasn’t any answer, he tried comming the ship. “McCoy to Enterprise. Enterprise, come in.”

 He fiddled with the channels, the frequency knob, the bandwidth, repeating his transmission, and got nothing but that eerie static. It dawned on him that maybe he should try it outside, away from the wreck. The only way out was up, and he would have to climb over the seats to get to the hatch on the side of the shuttle. On the way he could search for the other survivors… if there were any.

 Leonard began scaling the shuttle, trying to ignore the searing pain in his gut, then froze when he saw a claw-like hand dangling in the aisle. Scrambling up the incline, pulling himself hand over hand using the passenger seats as leverage, he rounded on the chair. It was Lt Baquero. He saw the way her head was bent at the wrong angle and recognized rigor mortis before he even touched the body, but he double-checked her pulse just to be sure. She was still strapped into her seat but had snapped her neck, the poor soul. He gently closed her staring, unseeing eyes, which had sparkled with excitement over her geological finds just a few hours before. It was then that Leonard looked up and noticed that the shuttlecraft was not entirely intact. A gust of wind blew flurries in through an enormous hole rent in the front of the shuttlecraft, the port side crushed inwards all the way down to where he’d been sitting. He gaped at the scene, unable to comprehend how it could’ve happened. The forward section was totally gone. Which probably meant Jim was gone, too, since he had been in the pilot’s seat. Trying to bury the thought, Leonard continued his vertical sweep of the shuttle. There wasn’t any sign of the remaining crew. His innards in agony, he hopped sideways from seat to seat, pulled the manual emergency lever and kicked the shuttle’s side door open into the swirling snow outside.

 “HOROVITZ!!!! JIM!!!” He was shouting at the top of his lungs, but his voice couldn’t carry over the sound of the wind. They were on the side of a damn mountain or something, the shuttle rammed into solid rock. It was difficult to see through the haze of the storm. Icy wind was whipping Leonard’s hair around and sucking air from his lungs, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He took out his comm and tried to contact the Enterprise again, turning up the volume and pressing the device against his ear to hear it over the roar of the wind. Nothing was working, and he could barely hear himself think, let alone hear anything come out of the communicator. Then, he spotted a trail of warped, shredded metal leading to the front of the shuttle just a few yards away. Limping over as fast as he could, he ducked inside. It was relatively undamaged; however, he quickly turned away, horrified, when he saw the gore all over one side of the shattered main viewscreen and control panels.

“-Jesus!” Leonard choked out, squeezing his eyes shut, bile rising in his throat. Hot tears burned behind his eyelids. Blinking the haze away, he put an arm over his nose and mouth, and forced himself to shuffle forward, a few steps at a time. The remains of the body, dressed in its familiar azure blue survival suit with command yellow stripes at the shoulders, were tossed like a rag doll down on the floor, its face caved in, now completely unrecognizable. Leonard reached out a boot to nudge one broad shoulder over so he wouldn’t have to look at it. It rolled gracelessly onto its front, revealing a full head of salt and pepper hair on the back of its skull. It was an awful way for Lt Horovitz to pass- he must not have had time to secure his harness- and Leonard truly grieved for the man, but he was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief, and immediately felt guilty that he was so grateful the pulpy horror wasn’t Jim. Now he allowed himself a tiny sliver of hope. He whirled around to face the pilot’s seat and almost sobbed at the sight of Starfleet’s golden boy bent limply over the navigation console, one harness strap broken and one holding him like a sling. Jim was whole and unblemished, save for a nasty gash on the side of his forehead that was pressed against the control panel. Leonard pulled his medical tricorder off of his belt and did a full-body scan. Waving the tricorder’s resonant wand over Jim’s spine, he concentrated on pinpointing any back or neck injuries that might make it necessary to immobilize him. Jim had some whiplash, but aside from his head, surprisingly, he was in pretty good shape. Leonard gently grasped Jim’s shoulders and and settled him against the back of the chair.

 “Jim.” He lightly patted Jim’s cheek. Bright red blood ran in rivulets down Jim’s pasty face, following the curve of the bruised orbital around his eye. “Come on, Jim, wake up.” When he got no response, Leonard impatiently shook his shoulders. “Jimmy,” he pleaded. Jim’s head lolled forward. Strong gusts of wind blew into the open maw of the shuttle, burying the floor in drifts of snow and ice little by little. The cockpit wasn’t the best place to find shelter from the elements, and Leonard could barely feel his face or his fingertips any more. They would have to go back to the rear half of the shuttle soon before they both got frostbite. Leonard did triage quickly, cleaning the cut, sealing it, and injecting Jim with an anti-inflammatory. Judging by the tricorder readings and the swollen lump on his forehead, Jim had a pretty severe concussion, and Leonard would have to find the emergency tissue regenerator. He thought he heard Jim moan, but the captain still wasn’t responsive when Leonard cupped his face in his hands. “James Tiberius Kirk!!! _Dammit,_ man!!!” he shouted, and decided to risk moving him. They couldn’t wait any longer.

 Popping Jim’s harness open, he hooked his elbows underneath Jim’s armpits and dragged him out of the chair. Jim was heavier than he’d assumed. Somehow the man always came across as leaner and less densely muscled than he actually was. It must be all that protein he was always shoving in his face. Maybe, if they survived this, he would make Jim go on a green, leafy diet, Leonard thought with a wry smirk.

 Huffing with exertion, Leonard dragged Jim over the wreckage of the cockpit back out into the freezing maelstrom. He tried to lift Jim completely into his arms but he felt his injury flare and quickly abandoned the idea, continuing to drag him backwards over ever-deepening snowdrifts. Once they got to the other half of the shuttle, navigating the interior with Jim in his grasp got a little more tricky. Leonard cautiously inched his way down, but before they could get to the bottom he lost his balance, twisted to shield Jim from further injury, and felt something inside his gut _wrench._ They ended up sliding down the rest of the way, landing in a tangled heap at the back of the shuttlecraft. Leonard was aching, somehow frozen but hot at the same time, the powdery ice crystals clinging to his skin and hair melting and mingling with his own sweat, and he had to rest for a moment in order to catch his breath. His head was pressed uncomfortably into the back of Jim’s shoulder blade, limbs akimbo, Jim’s elbow digging into his ribs. Easing out from underneath Jim’s bulk just enough to breathe, he looped one arm around Jim’s chest, taking care not to jostle his head. Leonard pressed his cheek to Jim’s shoulder, wheezing. Jim made an annoyed sound, the, “Just five more minutes” whine, as if Leonard had just tried to drag him out of bed for one of their more boring lectures at the Academy. Grunting with effort, Leonard attempted to sit up, but failed. The skewed angle of the shuttle made his muscles have to work harder, and the pain was intense. After a few more aborted tries, he finally caught hold of a jump seat and hauled his torso upright. Leonard cradled Jim in his arms and cupped his cheek, watching him intently. Jim’s eyelashes fluttered.

“Oh, so now you wake up,” Leonard said breathlessly, rolling his eyes. However, Jim didn’t fully wake. He simply mumbled something incoherent, clutched at Leonard’s jacket, and went limp again.

 Gasping, his vision blurry, Leonard forced his shaky legs to stand, and willed his arms to pull Jim over to a less cluttered spot and prop him up in a better position. It was difficult considering they were on an incline at the rear juncture of the shuttle floor and the loading doors. Only a small section of the shuttle was level due to the way the impact had warped the bottom of the craft, so he would just have to deal with it. Once Jim was situated, Leonard got on his hands and knees and searched the floor for the emergency supply hatch. Finally spotting the handle, he grasped it and gave it a quarter turn until it clicked and sprung open with a hiss. Thankfully, the supplies inside were undamaged from the crash. Digging through various outdoor survival equipment, he found the first-aid kit. Leonard opened it up and took out its portable tissue regenerator, his frozen digits fumbling with the settings. He positioned the segmented, trapezoidal device on Jim’s head and waited to feel the suction field seal itself in place and for the initial cell bombardment cycle to start. An unnaturally bright, blueish spectrum of healing light shone out from under its edges.

 When Leonard was confident the regenerator was doing its job, he went back to rooting through the emergency supply hatch and found the emergency beacon.  It was getting harder and harder to concentrate, and he had to fiddle with the black, galvanized metal tripod for quite some time until he remembered how to set it up. He probably hadn’t actually done any emergency drills since his Academy field training, and it felt like he was shaking his head every few minutes just to keep himself alert. It probably wouldn’t hurt to try his communicator one more time for the hell of it, while he still could.

 “McCoy to Enterprise.”

 Static.

 “This is Dr. McCoy. Do you read, Enterprise?” Then, “Spock, for the luvva God, pick up!!!”

 For once, what he wouldn’t give to hear that pointy-eared hobgoblin’s uber-condescending voice telling him that he was being highly illogical.

 Abandoning the useless attempt to contact the ship, he pulled a sleeping bag out of the compartment. He eased Jim’s legs inside the quilted material and tugged the rest of it up and over his prone form, wedging an arm under Jim and holding his back up off the floor. Jim sighed softly. The color seemed to be coming back to his face. As Leonard finished arranging Jim, his strength finally gave out. He crumpled to the floor, shaking, clutching at his wound. Everything was spinning and the anaesthetic was wearing off, the pain in his abdomen growing more acute with every passing minute, like a blade twisting inside him. He suddenly panicked. He didn’t want to die this way, with Jim still unconscious, with no one else around to help him, and no way to contact the ship. Leonard couldn’t even relay a final message to his daughter Joanna because he didn’t have a simple Padd and a stylus. God, Jo… he hadn’t spent nearly enough time with her since he’d enlisted, and he needed to see her again so badly. He just had to hold on… Just a little bit longer… He whimpered feebly, reaching out to Jim with blood stained fingers, and despite using everything in his power to stay awake, he sank into unconsciousness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listen to music to get in the mood to write so I'm gonna list what I've been listening to as I go along.
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Out of This World (Originally written by Cole Porter, arranged by Richard Marino)  
> From the LP Out of This World: A Unique and Startling Musical Adventure with the Richard Marino Orchestra,1961
> 
> This whole LP is a great listen, actually, if you like cheesy Space-Age exotica.


	2. Chapter 2

It was cozy, and so very warm, and there was a strange but blissful sensation all around his head. Someone was caressing his head over and over, running something soothing- a comb?- over his scalp, dipping in and out of his hair, fingertips lightly grazing his skull. He felt the fingers carding through, parting, searching, exploring, gently tugging at individual locks, smoothing his hair back. Then trickling cold penetrated down to his scalp, and the process started all over again. His head buzzed and tingles ran up and down his spine. He couldn’t help but shudder, uttering a faint, deep groan.

“Bones, you awake?” asked Jim. Leonard kept his eyes closed. Perhaps the shuttle crash was all a dream. He’d had those nightmares constantly during the flight portion of his Starfleet training. If only he was back in the Academy and Jim was hanging out in his dorm, as was his habit. It was often distracting, but Leonard didn’t mind. Somehow, Jim was immune to his gruff exterior, the same personality flaw that ended up driving everyone else away. He seemed to relish in pushing the irritable doctor beyond his limits because Leonard always pushed back and offered him a challenge. And Jim Kirk never backed down from a challenge. Sooner or later, Leonard always gave in because he just couldn’t say no to those devastatingly deep blue eyes, that playful smile, and Jim’s sweet cajoling tempered by his clever intellect. He swore the guy could talk anyone into anything. So far Leonard’s list included (but was not limited to): Letting Jim call him “Bones,” closing the bar down at nearly every dive in San Francisco, singing karaoke, speeding around on the back of Jim’s motorcycle without a helmet, agreeing to be part of Jim’s crew when Jim took the Kobayashi Maru not just once, but three times, actually going into outer space on a damn starship, becoming Jim’s official CMO, going on away missions, and stepping foot in that _mother fucking shuttle_. Yes, Jim was a hell of a diplomat, which was a huge part of why he made such a great captain. With all that history behind them, they had developed an unspoken understanding of each other, a trust that couldn’t be broken. They knew everything about each other, all their phobias, dreams, vices, quirks, even what kind of underwear they prefered (Leonard, briefs, Jim, nothing.) But there was one thing Jim didn’t know, that Leonard had kept close to his chest.

Cold fingers touched Leonard’s face and he jerked away from them. “Sorry, I forgot, my hands must be freezing,” said Jim.

Leonard opened his eyes and waited for everything to come into focus. He was looking up at the buckled ceiling of the damaged shuttlecraft with all its cracks and exposed wires.

“Goddamit,” he growled.

“And I thought you’d be happy to see me,” Jim pouted. He leaned into Leonard’s field of vision above him, his face upside down. Leonard _was_ glad to see that Jim looked much better, the swelling on his forehead gone and the gash replaced by fresh, pink skin. His eyes shone with the spark of daredevil genius he usually displayed under much better circumstances. It was very reassuring. But Leonard was still pissed that they were marooned on this godforsaken planet, stuck inside the unassuming deathtrap that had almost killed them.

“I was hoping it was all just a bad dream,” he explained. Jim shook his head, smiling apologetically.

“Nope. Sorry, Bones. If I would’ve known polar vortexes formed spontaneously on this planet, I never would’ve suggested coming down here.” Leonard felt Jim’s hands cradling the sides of his head, and then the warmth Leonard was laying on shifted a little. He realized that his head was in Jim’s lap and his cheeks grew hot. “All the initial survey data suggested it was stable. If I’d just waited a few more hours...”

“It’s not your fault any of this happened, Jim,” Leonard said quietly. Jim clenched his jaw and pulled back out of Leonard’s field of vision, so Leonard craned his head back.

“I saw Baquero. What happened to Horovitz?” Jim asked, his expression grim.

“He’s dead, Jim.”

“How?”

“Died on impact of massive trauma. He wasn’t strapped in. I… don’t suggest you go looking for him.” The image of the broken body in his mind still made Leonard a little queasy. He grimaced and swallowed.

“Wait, so you found him outside???” Jim asked in disbelief. “Did you actually go out there?!?”

“Of course, I went looking for y’all after I woke up,” Leonard replied, irritated. “The whole front of the shuttle got sheared off somehow. That’s where I found you. You had a severe concussion and you were completely unresponsive, so I had to drag your heavy ass all the way back in here, before you got hypothermia.”

“Holy shit, Bones.”  Jim’s fingers curled in Leonard’s hair. “That’s incredible. I can’t believe- well, I mean, that’s so... valiant.”

Leonard snorted. “Just part of the job. Don’t make it sound so dramatic.”

“Seriously, Bones, thanks. Are you okay???”

“I’m a little banged up, but…” Leonard looked down. His survival suit was remarkably free of any blood stains and with the jacket zipped up, Jim couldn’t see the wound. Out of sight, out of mind. Leonard made a split decision. He couldn’t worry Jim, not now. “...I’ll be fine,” he stated. Jim peered down at him skeptically.

“You really freaked me out. When I woke up, you were out cold… and your face was covered in blood. I mean, there was just so much blood. I’ve been trying to clean you up a little. God, where did this all come from?!?” He gestured to a gross pile of burgundy clumps interspersed with strands of dark hair, laying atop several discarded sanitary wipes that were stained red. “Sorry that I woke you up, but… I’m glad you’re awake. I was half- afraid you’d bled out or something.”

Leonard cringed and closed his eyes. He was probably bleeding out, but slowly, where it wasn’t obvious, and only time would tell how long he would last. “I’m alright. ...Head wounds tend to bleed a lot. So how do you feel, Jim?” he asked, trying to deflect attention away from himself.

“I’ve got nothing more than a slight headache, thanks to you. But you forgot to think about yourself, you ass. You had no blankets, no sleeping bag. And you didn’t set up the heater.” Leonard realized that the soft orange light bathing them both must be coming from a frictionless heater somewhere out of sight. Its warmth radiated in the enclosed space. Jim had cocooned him in a sleeping bag, snug as a bug in a rug.

“Yeah, well, cut me some slack. I was kinda out of it.”

“You were so cold, Bones. I really thought you were dead, at first.” Jim sounded amused, but there was a barely perceptible tremor in his voice. The combing sensation was back, gently tugging at the clotted mess in his hair, and Leonard gradually let all his muscles go slack. Jim’s hands tilted Leonard’s head to the left and Leonard opened his eyes halfway. He saw a concave piece of plastic debris filled with snow sitting next to them, saw Jim dip his fingers in to scoop some up, and felt him rub the snow into his hair and quickly comb it through. Jim proceeded to methodically brush his entire scalp. It was just simple grooming, but such an affectionate gesture, and felt so, so good.

After a while, Leonard asked, “Izzat comb official Starfleet issue survival gear?” The words came out slurred and drowsy. He was so incredibly relaxed, he felt high as a kite. Jim chuckled.

“Scotty gave it to me as a joke. He said-” Jim launched into his best impression of their chief engineer’s Scottish brogue- “‘Yer missin’ the most important tool in yer survival suit. Heaven forbid anythin’ happens and Captain Perfecthair gets one hair out of place.’ And then he stuck this in my pocket with such a serious expression that I just lost it.” Bones couldn’t help but laugh, but inhaled sharply when he felt jarring pain in his belly. He tried to mask it with more forced laughter.

“That’s you, alright. You’re so obsessed with perfect hair that you’re messing with my hair. But I’ll let you know right now, it’s a lost cause.” Even on his best hair days, Leonard’s thick, dark locks were often unruly and impossible to control.

“Whatever Bones, you have great hair. A lot of it. And I can’t let you walk around like this- it’s just disgusting and it’s starting to smell.” The comb caught on a particularly stubborn clump. Jim rubbed some more snow into it and wiggled the comb, deftly teasing it out, and flicked it off the comb’s teeth into the pile of ick. After a few more long, unobstructed pulls of the comb, Jim put it aside. Leonard heard a package crinkling, then felt Jim press a cold wet wipe to his right ear and scrub firmly all around every curve and fold of cartilage, even digging inside.

“Hey, that’s enough!” huffed Leonard, trying to turn his head and push Jim’s hand away. Jim’s other hand clamped down on Leonard’s forehead, holding it in place.

“I told you, you’re a mess. I’m surprised you can even hear me out of that ear,” Jim said, not letting up. He discarded the wipe and got another, scouring Leonard’s cheek and his temple. “Close your eyes.”

Leonard grudgingly did as he was told and felt the hand holding him down release its grip and nudge his face so that he was facing upward again. The wipe made a gentle circuit around his right eye, passed over his eyelid, bore down on his eyebrow, then rubbed along his entire forehead.

“Done. Sit up and I can get the back.”

“I’m good,” said Leonard quickly.

Jim patted Leonard’s shoulders. “Come on, now.” He pushed the doctor up halfway and Leonard braced himself on his hands, straining to pull himself up with only the muscles in his arms, feeling the burn in his gut come alive. His teeth clamped down on his bottom lip but a pained grunt still forced its way out of his throat.

“What’s wrong??” Jim asked, frozen in place, his hands hovering above Leonard’s shoulders like he was afraid to touch him.

“Just...sore,” Leonard assured him. Jim relaxed, and picked up the comb again, swiping it repeatedly from the crown of Leonard’s head to his neck with a dollop of slush.

“I am too. My neck, mostly. But we’re the lucky ones.”

 _You’re the lucky one,_ Leonard thought. He’d never met anyone in his life with as much divine fortune as Jim, who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Jim had managed to cheat death so many times, McCoy was tempted to distill his essence and bottle it for his patients in critical. And here he was, smiling and whole again, while Leonard’s injury was like a ticking time bomb. Things never seemed to work out for Leonard, like his late father’s treatment, his former marriage, and now this. He pulled his legs out of the sleeping bag, then turned to face Jim, all his delayed reactions to the crash simmering under the surface and threatening to boil over.

“Scotty gave you a good luck charm. Does anyone ever give me nice gifts or tell me funny jokes when they see me walk by? No. They run the other way,” he griped.

“Bones.”

Leonard  flashed a sarcastic grin. “I’m sorry, I forgot, they do give me something. A hard time.”

“Booooones.”

“Admit it. You do, too. I have to get Spock and a security team to herd you into Sickbay for your physicals.” Jim blinked innocently.

“That’s different. I’ve never _run away_ from you. Sheesh, what’s your problem, Bones-”

Leonard’s lip lifted in a snarl. “We just fell out of the sky in a goddamn wreck that killed two people instantly, and if the Enterprise can’t find us, we’re as good as dead, too!” he snapped. “You know as well as I do that this planet has no organic life, and it’s so chock full of ions we can’t even use our own comms to talk to each other if we wanted to! I don’t exactly feel _lucky._ I’ll consider us lucky once we’re safely back on the Enterprise!!!” He didn’t mean unload all his pent up anxiety on Jim, but the throbbing pain in his belly had pierced through his comfortable haze, and the reality of the situation was crashing down around him just like the shuttle had. Jim’s eyes were wide and hurt and a little affronted, but Leonard couldn’t stop. “I told you, I told everyone, you can’t trust these flying tin cans, but you just had to make me come along with you-”

“- I thought you’d appreciate a change of scenery for once-”

“- I don’t even know what I’m _doing_ down here for Christ’s sake-”

“- Spock couldn’t go, so you were the obvious choice-”

“- ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ you said, ‘Nothing’s gonna happen,’ you said-”

“-Usually nothing ever does!!!”

“- I HATE flying, Jim. I HATE IT. I never want to see another shuttlecraft again for the rest of my fucking LIFE if I can help it!!! Why don’t you ever LISTEN to me?!?”

The ambient noise of the storm outside had lessened and the wind was no longer blowing as harshly. Leonard’s heaving breaths sounded loud in the silence that followed their exchange.

“You’re right, Bones. I shouldn’t’ve made you come along. But get ahold of yourself. You’re a Starfleet officer.” Jim’s voice was quiet and even, with a commanding edge. “And you’ll have to ride a shuttle back up on our way out of here.”

Deflating, Leonard rubbed his sweaty forehead with one hand. It seemed ridiculous to be yelling at the man he’d been secretly carrying a torch for, especially if he didn’t have much time left. After a few moments, he squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head and said, “Of course. I forgot about that.” Jim reached out and clasped Leonard’s shoulders. His eyes, those damn gorgeous eyes that perfectly matched the jewel-toned blue of his survival suit, looked deep into Leonard’s rings of humble hazel, confident and full of promises.

“We’re going to make it,” said Jim.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Bones replied, his voice threatening to crack.

 

* * *

 

Jim heated up some MRE’s by pulling the rehydration tabs and plugging them into the portable heater. Leonard ate slowly, chewing thoroughly. He didn’t feel like eating and knew it might actually be a bad idea, considering the type of internal injuries he’d sustained, but his body needed the fuel. He got through about a quarter of his tray before holding it out to Jim, who was sitting next to him. “Here,” he said. “I’m not very hungry, and I don’t want it to go to waste.”

Confused, Jim looked down at the tray, then back up at Leonard with concern. “What’s going on with you, Bones?”

“I still have some vertigo from the crash. Don’t wanna puke everywhere if I can help it.”

Jim accepted the excuse with a nod, and proceeded to wolf down the extra portion. “We need to go over the plan for tomorrow. I hate to tell you this, but we can’t stay here inside the shuttle.”

“Why not?” Leonard asked, staring at Jim in disbelief.

“The storm is dying down and once the sun comes up, this whole thing might become unstable. We crashed in the middle of a snowstorm, but when we came down here it was sunny and pretty balmy outside. Even though we’re at a higher altitude, the snow will start to melt. Plus, there’s a dead body in here.”

“Well, where will we go?” Leonard had been hoping he’d get more of a chance to rest, and maybe heal. He hadn’t been counting on lugging around a bunch of equipment on some trek down the side of the mountain.

“I don’t know yet,” said Kirk. “We’ll have to hike around and survey the area to find a safe place to camp out. The good thing is that we have plenty of water all around us. I’m going to set my comm to wake us up at sunrise.”

“Are we going to have to go all the way back down to where we were before???”

Jim shook his head. “The higher the transmitter, the better the odds that the Enterprise will pick it up, so no, I don’t want to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

Dropping a purifying tablet into a canteen of freshly melted snow, Leonard swished the water around and waited for it to dissolve. Maybe he should be truthful with Jim about his injury. It would eventually become obvious, anyways. He cleared his throat.

“Jim… I shouldn’t’ve raised my voice earlier.”

“No harm, no foul. You made me realize something. ...I haven’t exactly been fair to you.” Jim put down his empty tray and fidgeted.

“Jim, that’s not it at all. Look, there’s something I have to tell you.” Leonard took a deep breath.

“Before you go on,” Jim interjected, “I’m sorry for always being so pushy and trying to force you out of your comfort zone. To be perfectly honest, it’s all for very selfish reasons,”

Raising an eyebrow, Leonard pinned Jim with a withering glare. “You don’t say.”

“I just like having you around,” continued Jim, looking a little flustered. “I guess I want to share all these experiences with you because you just get me on a level no one else ever has. I feel a lot more secure when you’re with us on an away mission.” His eyes flicked up, then looked back down at the floor of the shuttle self-consciously. All Leonard could do was gape at the confession. Jim wasn’t usually one to discuss his feelings, and this was quickly becoming very personal... maybe even a declaration of something more?

“Jim…”

“You’re the most important person in my life, Bones. I don’t think I could’ve made it through the Academy without you. I wouldn’t have been able to even get on board the Enterprise without your help. You have no idea how much I… how much I appreciate your company.” He held up a hand, interrupting Leonard’s attempt to respond. “Just let me finish,” he said. “I am so grateful you weren’t killed in the crash. I never would’ve forgiven myself if you ended up like the others. And there’s a reason you’re here. If you hadn’t been on this mission, I might have just stayed in that pilot’s seat and froze to death, or died from head trauma, or- or both. You saved me, Bones, you always look out for me, and I don’t take that- or you- for granted.”

Jim was trembling, looking over at Leonard in earnest, now. Stunned, Leonard reached out to him. “Jim. Jim, I’m not thrilled to be here, but I’m glad I’m with you,” he said, hooking his arm around his neck and pulling him into a fierce hug. Jim buried his face in Leonard’s shoulder and put his arms around him, squeezing him tightly enough to push the breath from his lungs. Or maybe Leonard just couldn’t breathe because his heart was in his throat. It was everything he always wanted to hear. Jim pushed back away from him, flushed and eyes shiny, just enough to be able to look directly into Leonard’s face. They held each other, arms locked, hot breath filling the short space between them. Jim parted his lips and leaned in. Leonard’s heart pounded, and he reflexively closed his eyes, waiting for those enticing lips to meet his own.

Instead, he felt the top of Jim’s head bump into his mouth as Jim clutched at him and buried his face in his chest. “I really thought you were dead,” Jim said in a shaky voice. “I’ve never been so scared before, Bones- that’s why I couldn’t stand to look at you with all that blood all over your face- God, I almost killed you-”

He was quickly becoming hysterical and Leonard abandoned all his fantasies, feeling a pang of guilt. Jim needed a friend right now, an anchor, not someone who was going to take advantage of him in their stressful predicament. Leonard was reminded that Jim’s headstrong, charming exterior was often a very convincing act that shielded a complex and vulnerable man underneath. Jim hadn’t exactly had an easy upbringing, and as long as Leonard had known him, he didn’t seem to have any close relationships with anyone, not even his family members. He probably considered Leonard more of a brother than anything else.

“Shhhh. You didn’t almost kill me, you gave us a fighting chance to live. Anyone else probably would’ve piloted the shuttle straight into the ground. Everything’s okay now.” Leonard patted and rubbed Jim’s back, soothing him. “You’re tired, Jim. I think we were both in shock and the adrenaline’s startin’ to wear off. It’s been a long day and we need to rest.” Jim nodded his head silently, still pressed into Leonard’s chest, his head tucked underneath Leonard’s chin. The doctor gently pushed him away.

“Here, lay down. Your head still sore?”

Jim nodded silently again, sinking down onto his sleeping bag.

“I’m gonna give you a painkiller and you’re gonna go to sleep. Okay?”

Jim nodded a third time. “Yeah. Ok.” There were puffy bags under his eyes, and he had a five- o'clock shadow. Leonard hadn’t witnessed him looking this haggard in a long time, not since the aftermath of the battle with Nero. He turned to his medkit and loaded up a hypo, then pressed it into the side of Jim’s neck.

“Sleep tight, Jim.” He reached out and gave Jim’s crown of blonde hair a fond tousle. Jim grabbed his arm and looked up at him intently.

“What were you going to tell me? Before, you said you needed to tell me something. I’m listening.”

Leonard went rigid. He couldn’t break it to Jim now, not after everything he just said.

“I tried calling the ship several times and they didn’t answer,” he said after a beat. Jim seemed perplexed.

“Is that all?”

“Jim… we can talk about it tomorrow. Just go to sleep.”

Jim looked at him warily, but closed his eyes and turned over. Once Leonard was certain Jim was fast asleep, he went back to his sleeping bag and adjusted the dial on the hypo to the highest setting he dared for his body weight. Trying to be as quiet as possible, he unzipped his jacket and unbuckled his belt, pushing down the waistband of his pants so he could fully inspect his injury. It was difficult to see in the dim, orange light from the heater. He carefully peeled back the bandage. The bruising around the dark, jagged line where the debris had penetrated was ugly, but not as inflamed as he thought it would be. His fingers probed around the site and he breathed hard through his nose, stifling gasps of pain. It was tender, very tender, but he didn’t feel anything hard like leftover shrapnel, a clot or an obstruction. He wanted to double check with the tricorder, but that would certainly wake Jim up. Leonard hypo’d himself and zipped his jacket closed. It didn’t take long for the drug to hit him, making his muscles rubbery and his head feel disconnected from his body. He just barely managed to cover himself with the outer flap of the sleeping bag when he felt himself completely    lose touch with reality    and ascend

            into  a       celestial

                                       wonderland

                                             

                                                              of

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized this fic has ASMR.
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Space Song by Beach House  
> From the album Depression Cherry, 2015


	3. Chapter 3

“-ise and shine, sleepyhead. Seriously, man, you are hard to pry out of bed in the morning.”

Leonard blinked sluggishly. Jim was shaking him.

“Time to get up and get with the program, Bones. I know you hated survival training but this is the real thing now. We don’t have time to sleep in.” Jim threw back the top of the sleeping bag, and cold air hit Leonard’s sprawling form. He squinted at his surroundings, vision wavering and doubling as if he was looking at everything underwater. The orange glow was gone so the heater had probably been turned off. Jim was squatting next to him, bright eyed like the irritatingly energetic morning person he was.

“Bones, I’m not kidding. Get up.”

Leonard rolled onto his hands and knees then pushed himself up into a crouch, waiting for everything to stop pitching and yawing like the deck of a sailboat.

“I could use some help with these packs,” said Jim, jerking a thumb at a couple frames he’d already started putting together. The captain got to his feet and went back over to the storage compartment, pulling out various supplies. Leonard tried to follow him but drunkenly stumbled sideways and fell back to his knees. The fact that everything around him was on an incline was not helping his screwed-up sense of balance any. Jim glanced back at him critically. “Bones?”

“Just- just gimme a sec, Jim,” Leonard said, swaying. He felt terrible, and he suddenly knew he was going to be sick. Covering his mouth with the back of his hand, he crawled to the nearest corner full of debris, where he emptied his stomach in short order.

“Shit,” he thought he heard Jim say. A minute later, he sensed Jim kneel beside him and lay a hand on his back. “You okay?”

“-Feel a lot better now,” Leonard said blearily, coughing the bile out of his throat. Spitting out a glob of something that vaguely resembled coffee grounds, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Fortunately the rest of the stuff he’d hacked up had pooled somewhere hidden. He sat down heavily and then Jim was pressing a canteen into his shaking hands. He took a pull of the canteen and spit, then swallowed a mouthful of clean water.

“Are you pregnant?” asked Jim, making Leonard snort laughter. Jim grinned, relieved to see Leonard crack a smile.

“Who’s the deadbeat father, hmm?” Leonard punched Jim in the shoulder. “There’s only one other person on this entire planet.”

“That’s the fastest pregnancy I’ve ever heard of. Can I impregnate people by just looking at them???” Jim said incredulously. Leonard gave him a knowing look.

“That’s the legend of Captain Perfecthair.”

That made Jim double over with laughter, for which Leonard felt a sense of pride.

“Seriously now, are you going to be okay to go?” Jim’s laughter trailed off. He gave Leonard a once-over, and the wary look from the previous night was back. Jim had sharply honed instincts, and it was going to be difficult to continue fooling him.

“I lost a lot of blood and it’s making me dizzy, is all,” said Leonard. “I may not have the strength I normally would, but I’ll manage.” Leonard moved to get up and Jim offered him a hand. Taking it, he let Jim help him over to the supply frames.

“Make yours lighter,” said Jim. “Here.” He swapped out some items with Leonard. “You can carry the tent.”

Leonard eyed their cache of supplies. “Please tell me there are hats and scarves in there somewhere.”

“There’s a hood with a face protector built into your survival suit. That’s why there’s a zipper on the inside of the collar. It kinda looks like a ninja mask.” Jim strapped his rolled up sleeping bag to the bottom of the frame. “By the way, it suits you.”

“What?” asked Leonard. “A mask?”

“No, the survival suit. I didn’t know Medical had different colors than ours.”

“Oh.” Leonard absently ran his fingers over the stiff material of his suit, which, unlike Jim’s, was a pale gray, almost white, interspersed with reinforced panels of deeper greys and charcoal trim, with broad maroon stripes on the shoulders. “I’m not used to wearing one of these. The ones we wore in the Academy were different, more like flight suits. They had a little more room.”

Jim humphed. “Well, I like these. They’re kind of like a motorcycle outfit.” It was probably like a second skin to Jim, who had built and raced motorcycles throughout his adolescence in Iowa. For Leonard, wearing the fitted survival suit felt unwieldy and restrictive. Plus, there was a type two phaser nestled in a holster digging into his hip, secured by an elastic strap around his thigh. He understood the reasoning behind it, but as a medic he had always struggled with the ethical issues of being armed.

They had divvied up the remainder of the most critical supplies when Jim said, “huh.” He held up a dark grey, fur-lined trapper cap that had a Starfleet insignia pinned to the front. “Just what the doctor ordered,” he declared, tossing it to Leonard. Leonard ran his fingers through its soft, silvery fur lining before putting it on.

“There’s one for you, too, I hope,” said Leonard. Jim waved his hand dismissively.

“Eh, I don’t need a hat.”

“Jim, you put one on or I swear to God I’ll-”

“Alright, _mom._ ” Jim fished out another hat and pulled it down over his ears. “How do I look?”

“Chekov would be having a field day,” Leonard said, secretly thinking that Jim was so easy on the eyes, he could honestly pull off wearing stuff that no one else would ever be able to get away with- like two different shades of orange, or slippers without socks, or a hat that looked like it was straight out of Leningrad.

“Ah yes, ushanka really were invented in Mother Russia,” laughed Jim. He folded up the ear flaps, buckled them in place atop his head and stood. “Okay, we’re ready. Do you have everything?” Leonard made sure his comm and tricorder were clipped to his belt and his medkit was strapped across his body. He took the phaser out of its holster, double-checked to see that it was still charged and in working order, then snapped it back in place.

“Ready,” Leonard replied, feeling anything but. They both shouldered their surplus packs and navigated the tricky incline to the shuttle’s side door. It was a little easier this time since Jim was there to help pull him along, but the added weight of the pack was a strain. Leonard immediately felt his sutured abs protesting, despite the painkiller he’d taken the night before. When they made it outside, he was shocked by how different the landscape looked from the previous day. Snow covered every surface of the mountainside, reflecting pale rays of light from a bright pink and orange sunrise. The storm was over, but it was still bitterly cold outside.

Jim whistled softly. “What a view,” he said in awe. They both peered into the distance, taking in the rest of the bulky mountain range that curved to the southwest, and the flat valley below they had originally landed on that was interspersed with delicate, wind carved quartz formations. Even the valley was dusted with a carpet of snow. Jim turned 180 degrees and stared wordlessly at the shuttlecraft wreckage.

“You did the best you could, Jim.” Leonard rested a hand on Jim’s shoulder.

Jim shook his head. “Tell that to Baquero and Horovitz’s families.”

“I can barely even land a simulated shuttle, much less land a real one with a blown nacelle and the systems shorted out in zero visibility weather. Stop being so hard on yourself,” Leonard chided. He wasn’t sure if Jim had even heard him at all, because the man was looking away, focused on something to their collective right.

“It's the front of the shuttlecraft,” Jim breathed.

“No, Jim.” Hooking an arm around Jim’s elbow, Leonard managed to briefly halt his forward momentum. “Just leave it alone.”

“You don’t understand,” Jim said in a strained voice, twisting and lurching out of Leonard’s grip. “It’s mostly intact. I can get the subspace transistor cell. We can boost the beacon’s signal.” It was obvious he wasn't going to wait for Leonard’s input. The decision was already made.

Fumbling for him, Leonard warned, “That thing may not be structurally sound!” but Jim was already plowing ahead without him. They left their packs outside the torn entrance. Snow and ice was scattered across the interior of the cockpit and the blood on the viewscreen glittered like faceted crystal. It wasn’t as bad this way. He could pretend they were in a morgue. Jim glanced at the frozen body and Leonard heard his sharp intake of breath, but Jim’s gaze didn’t linger. He opened up an access panel underneath the curved console at the blunt nose of the shuttlecraft. Unzipping a pocket on the pants of his survival suit, Jim removed a trio of tools and disappeared halfway into the mechanical guts of the machine, leaving only his legs sticking out. Leonard marvelled at how well he knew the inner workings of all their equipment. Maybe in another life he ended up an engineer like Scotty, or even a scientist, the way he could endlessly carry on technical conversations with Spock and not get bored out of his mind.

There was a clanging sound, then Jim emerged, a streak of grease on his nose and one cheek. “I got it,” he said, triumphantly holding up something that looked like a convoluted metal hourglass with a cylinder embedded in one end, copper- coated nodules, and a ribbon of multicolored wires attached.

“Then let’s get outta here,” said Leonard. The sooner they left, the sooner they would get to their destination, where he could hopefully lay back down and snuggle up close to the heater again.

They both meandered back outside and the transistor cell was safely ensconced in Jim’s pack. When everything was secured on their backs again, Jim placed a fond hand against the hull of the shuttle that had carried them safely through space and into the depths of hell frozen over.

“She was a good ship,” he said, then lifted his hand slowly, parting ways like a regretful lover. A thorn of jealousy stung Leonard and he immediately felt foolish competing with a confounded machine, but Jim oh so cherished the Enterprise and all its working parts. He wished Jim would look at him with the same reverence. Emitting a neutral grunt- the shuttle had probably stabbed him to death, after all- Leonard followed Jim around the wreckage. As they left the crash site behind, Jim took out his tricorder and swept it around in long, steady arcs, studying the readings. The ground before them wasn’t exactly steep, but there were places that had more of an incline than others, and they tread carefully. The monotonous white of the landscape was broken up by dark gray boulders and slabs of rock that rose out of the snow, dwarfing them. Like the desert landscape they had explored below, there was no vegetation and no sign of life. Just the stark mountain and ever-lightening sky full of hazy, towering thunderheads in the distance. Perhaps these freak storms always disrupted the chain of events leading to that initial spark of life, and this whole planet was a dead rock… or maybe its life was hidden, sleeping somewhere they hadn’t seen yet. The idea that they could run into any unknown out in the uncharted wilderness made Leonard shiver. Jim glanced over at him, raising an eyebrow. “You cold already?”

He decided to go with that, so he wouldn’t look so much like a coward. “We don’t have winters like this in Georgia, Jim. Snow, yes, but not blizzards that lay down a meter of snow all at once. What’s the temperature anyways?”

Jim checked his tricorder. “Negative 9.4 degrees Celsius. Not bad. A little like Iowa in the depths of winter.”

“Not bad?!? Did you run bareass naked in the snow when you were growing up??? You know what, don’t answer that,” Leonard said, rolling his eyes. The tip of his nose was starting to go numb from the chill. He adjusted his survival suit gloves, amazed at how, even though he had never worn them or the suit before, they were perfectly tailored to every finger. They even had room for the ring- his father’s ring- that he wore on his pinky. Ahead of him, Jim turned halfway and gave him a wicked grin, and Leonard felt his heart skip a beat. He admired all the contours of Jim’s body enhanced by his survival suit. The strong shoulders, muscled biceps, built torso, his deceptively skinny, yet powerful legs. And, of course, that perfect curve of ass he currently had a very nice view of since Jim was climbing on top of a rock outcropping. Whoever had designed the uniform had made it flattering from every angle.

In the Academy they had both seen each other in various states of undress in a variety of locker room situations, or in the mornings after they'd stayed up too late studying and Jim had to crash on Leonard's couch, then share Leonard's cramped bathroom in the rush to get ready for class. Not to mention the aftermath of nights of hard partying, which more often than not had ended with both of them weaving back to his dorm instead of Jim's, arms thrown around each others’ shoulders in a drunken stupor, stripping out of their alcohol sloshed clothes and passing out on the nearest horizontal surface. Sometimes right next to each other. And they’d been casual about it after familiarity set in. But each glimpse had burned itself into Leonard’s memory, and after a while it was almost torture to endure, to see and want what he could never have, what a litany of Jim’s casual conquests had indulged in. It was no wonder Jim had so many admirers who were keen to follow him to the ends of the Earth. Or more like, into the depths of space. Leonard had no delusions that Jim could ever admire him in the same way. Although he kept himself in decent shape, Leonard was far less athletically inclined and had at least 7 years on Jim. He was also a divorced father with nothing to his name that hadn’t been taken by his ex in the settlement- not exactly a prime catch.

God, here they were marching along in the middle of nowhere, and he was still worshiping the guy from afar. It was pathetic.

Abandoning his ogling, Leonard continued his own exploration of their environment. The deep charcoal colored stone dotting unspoiled snow, repeating as far as the eye could see, held a sort of hypnotic bleakness. He came across a long fissure in the rock, and he followed it up a slope. It grew wider and wider, until he realized he was looking into the narrow entrance of a cave. The interior was obscured in shadow and he couldn’t make out much of anything more than a few steps beyond the opening.

“Hey, Jim!” he called out, his voice echoing across the mountainside. Jim craned his head up from where he was scanning some rust-colored deposits and squinted, looking around in confusion, then finally focused on him.

“Wow, you really blend in! I wouldn’t’ve seen you if it wasn’t for your stripes.” Jim hiked up the ridge to join Leonard. “What did you find?”

“Check it out, it’s a cave. Maybe we could take shelter in here.”

“Are you kidding? A cave? No way,” Jim said, shaking his head firmly. “That’s the worst place we could go.”

Leonard’s brows knit together and he put his hands on his hips. “Why the hell not? It’s dry and out of the elements and pretty cozy lookin’...”

“We don’t know what’s in that cave. Caves can go down thousands of feet- they can have steep passageways and pitfalls. And they’re not necessarily dry at all; they flood easily,” Jim explained, lecturing Leonard like he was a first- year cadet. “The ventilation is poor and you never know if there may be volcanic gasses or stagnant pools inside. They also tend to be breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses. I know we haven’t picked up any life signs, but if there’s life anywhere, it’s probably underground and won’t be too happy to share its precious living space with some extra-terrestrials.  Plus the rock will muffle the signal from the beacon.”

“I see,” Leonard said, taking a step back. He felt stupid for ever suggesting they venture inside. Jim regarded the cave warily.

“Weird shit happens in caves. Last time I was in a cave, I found another version of Spock, so let’s just avoid this one, okay?”

Leonard nodded. He recalled the story Jim had confided in him of running into Spock’s older double from an alternate timeline in an ice cavern on Delta Vega. Jim rubbed his temple and his eyes seemed far away as they left the cave behind.

Exploring the rest of the area, they checked out a number of potential spots, but Jim found fault with them all. He seemed concerned about the large amount of boulders, clay and loose gravel around them and the possibility of potential landslides. “I think we ought to go up there,” he said, pointing to a cliff they had passed a while back. “The ground looks a lot more level and sturdy.”

“Can we rest for a minute?” asked Leonard. They’d been walking for at least two hours. He wasn’t cold any more, but his side was beginning to ache.

“Yeah, of course, of course,” Jim said. They sat down on a broad, smooth rock that breached the surface of the snow. Reaching into his pack, Jim brought out some protein bars. “Here, eat something. You must be starving, and you’ll need your strength to get up the mountain.”

“Is that even safe without climbing equipment?!?”

Jim shrugged. “It’s not that steep. It just takes a lot more energy to walk uphill.”

Leonard nibbled at the bar and sipped from his canteen, steeling himself for what was ahead. He thought of dosing himself with the painkiller again, but didn’t want to be drowsy. “How’s your head?” he asked.

“It’s fine. Are you still dizzy?”

“I’m alright for now.”

They finished eating and rested for about 15 minutes, plotting out the safest trajectory up the mountain with Jim’s tricorder. The pair would have to walk Northwest to skirt around some impassable terrain, then gradually make their way back East.

“This is why I'm always trying to take you rock climbing with me. You could have had a lot more practice, Bones,” admonished Jim as they navigated through the rugged uphill terrain.

Scowling, Leonard shot back, “I don't really like risking my life more than necessary. That's just not fun for me. Believe me when I say I get absolutely nothing out of the adrenaline rush of extreme sports besides a headache.” His boot slipped in the snow and he stumbled, grimacing, but quickly righted himself . “Do you know what my idea of a good time is?”

“Probably sitting on a porch swing and sipping a mint julep,” Jim guessed.

“Well yeah, that's relaxing. But we're talking about hobbies that are physically challenging. What if I told you there’s an ancient ritual that requires all your muscles, coordination, memory, leadership skills and creativity to master?”

Jim looked intrigued. “What is it?”

“Partner dancing.”

Jim burst out laughing and Leonard resisted the urge to smack him upside the head.

“You, dance??? You’ve got to be kidding me. I can't get you to set foot on the dance floor whenever we go out,” Jim managed to say between peals of laughter.

“That's because the dancing that goes on in clubs is a joke,” Leonard said derisively. “People just shake their ass any kind of way, or mindlessly grind on each other. I'm talking about waltz, two-step, square dance, jitterbug. Formal dancing where you rely on a partner, and need to learn technique.”

“Jitterwhut???”

“Jitterbug. It’s an old-fashioned term for swing dancing. I used to be real light on my feet when I was younger. It's how I met my ex-wife. We won quite a few dance contests before we had the baby and couldn’t really go out as much.” He smiled, reminiscing about the honeymoon phase with Joss before their relationship turned distant and sour. “A group of us frequented the same dance halls. Sometimes they were held in a barn. There was always a live band, and they played anything from country western to rhythm n’ jump blues, appalachian bluegrass, western swing and old jazz standards. We’d dress to impress. It was a real party atmosphere, everyone brought their own booze, and we danced and socialized long after midnight. And there was always a Cakewalk.”

“Cakewalk? What's that?” Jim sounded legitimately interested, now. Usually anything related to food garnered his attention.

“You buy tickets and everyone gets in a big circle, and you stand on the square that corresponds to the number on your ticket. When the music starts, you promenade around the circle until the music stops, and they pick a random number from a jar. The person standing on that number wins a cake," Leonard explained. "Well, It’s not always a cake. Sometimes it’s a pie or a cobbler. But anyways, it’s a dee-licious dessert that the dancers with the best baking skills always make from scratch.” He sighed wistfully. “It was always fun to just go and dance the night away, and see everyone get all primped up, to hang out with friends and share some moonshine, but the nights we came home with a cake too- those were the best nights.”

Jim was staring at him with a mixture of awe and amusement. “The South sounds like it’s frozen 400 years in the past. I didn’t think people even used the word 'promenade' in their daily vocabulary any more.”

“You know what, Jim?” Leonard said in an accusing tone. “You poke fun at it because you don’t have the balls to try it.”

“I’m no gentleman. I’d just make a fool of myself,” Jim sputtered.

Leonard imagined Jim, handsome, strong and lithe, confidently leading his partner across the dance floor with solid form, brilliant improvisation and spontaneous, youthful energy, the same way he led his crew. “You wouldn’t," he said. "You’d just learn it like you learned combat and how to hack the Kobayashi Maru and how to fly a shuttlecraft. I bet it would come second nature to you." Jim smiled bashfully and shook his head. It propelled Leonard to take a chance and suggest something he'd always thought about, but never had the courage to follow through with. At this point, he had nothing to lose, after all. "...If we get out of here alive… next shore leave I’ll take you to Macon and you can see for yourself.” Jim’s eyes lit up.

“If that means I get to see you dance, then it’s a deal!” he said enthusiastically, holding out his hand.

They shook on it. From that point on, Jim kept on sniggering to himself every time he glanced at Leonard until Leonard finally had to push him into a snowdrift and tell him to grow up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a cave story lol.
> 
> So I do live in the Southern US and I grew up dancing, though it was more of a personal choice and not expected of the younger generation. It was kind of like backwards Footloose, where our parents would be like, "Why are you listening to all this old music?!? Why do you dress like elderly people and dance the Charleston when you should be going clubbing like normal young people?!?" Then we all grew up and made the dance scene into a huge part of our community again. I still go dancing every chance I get. I've never done a cakewalk, though!
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Wishing for Contentment by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire  
> from the album Oh! The Grandeur, 1999
> 
> Locust in the Willow by Crooked Still  
> from the album Some Strange Country, 2010
> 
> Don't Fuck Around With Love by The Blenders  
> from the Jay Dee Records '45 single (recorded in 1953, but not allowed to be released until the 1970's, then reissued in 2010)


	4. Chapter 4

They were two-thirds of the way through the upward loop they were making and Leonard was starting to regret he ever thought he could do this. Each footstep was agony now, the insistent burn piercing through his nerves like a hot poker to the gut. Maybe, just maybe he could deal with the pain, sort of grow numb to it after a while, but the real issue was that his strength was nearly gone. They had rested once more, but Jim said they shouldn’t linger and waste daylight. Once Leonard had shrugged off his pack, free of the weight that bore down on him, it had been all he could do to stay awake.

Jim was rambling on about some epic backpacking trip he and his fellow rock-climbing enthusiasts (i.e. other people with no sense of self-preservation) took to Alaska, or maybe it was Alberta, Leonard wasn’t sure. He had stopped paying attention about an hour ago, and quit talking a half-hour before that to save his breath. He wasn’t trying to ignore Jim, it just took all of his concentration to take each step forward.

One foot in front of the other.

Right,  

Left.

Right,

Left.

Jim’s prediction that the temperature would change once the day progressed had turned out to be correct. It was warm enough to start melting the snow and dirt into dangerous, slippery muck. Some landslides had already occurred a stone’s throw away from them, so they had to be careful where they stepped. Jim was doing this instinctively, pressing ahead with a drive Leonard didn’t have, and Leonard found himself sliding backwards in the mud more often and falling further and further behind. He crossed his right arm over his torso and clamped a hand over his injury, trying to keep the pain at bay. Muscles and lungs burning with exhaustion, and sweat rolling into his eyes, he took one more tentative step and called for Jim in a broken voice. The captain turned around mid-sentence, trailing off when he saw how much distance was between them.

“-Bones? What’s up?”

Jim started to double back and Leonard staggered forward, trying to meet Jim halfway, but then his body decided it had finally had enough. With a whimper, Leonard keeled over into the cold, muddy slush at his feet. Everything went grey for a while, then he distantly heard his nickname over and over, and felt Jim slap his cheek until it began to smart. He slowly came around, reassuring Jim that he was ok, but Jim was having none of it.

“You should have told me how tired you were,” Jim said, sounding indignant and equally frightened. Loosening the straps of Leonard’s pack, he freed the doctor and lifted his torso out of the mud. Cradling him in his lap, Jim narrowed his eyes at the arm Leonard had tightly wrapped around his torso. “Why are you guarding your stomach?” he asked. Leonard struggled to find the strength to even answer him.

“I’ve got a stitch in my side,” he rasped.

“You know, what I don’t understand is that I searched and searched for that head wound and never found it. I went through your entire head with a fine toothed comb, Bones, literally, and I still have no clue where all that blood came from.” Jim impatiently waited for Leonard’s explanation… or confession.

“I laser sutured it so you never saw it,” Leonard said weakly. The answer was the truth, if about another part of his anatomy.

“You still reek,” said Jim, wrinkling his nose.  

“Well you sure don’t smell like a bed of roses yerself!” Leonard growled.

Baring his teeth, Jim exclaimed, “Like blood, Bones!!! You smell like blood!!!

Locking those aggravatingly blue eyes with his- and yes, aggravating, because how dare they be so damn blue at a time like this? How dare they???- Jim reached down and pried Leonard’s arm back. Leonard tried to resist, but didn't have the strength to fight him. Jim forcefully pulled down the zipper of Leonard’s jacket and pushed both halves of the garment out of the way. Focusing on where Leonard’s hand had been, Jim carefully examined him, pressing his fingers into the left side of Leonard’s stomach, then gradually moved lower, fingertips probing all along the way. Jim stopped when Leonard contorted in pain. He pushed up the blood and sweat-soaked thermal and saw the bandage peeking out from behind Leonard’s belt.

“What is this?!?” Jim demanded angrily, and Bones faltered.

“I was hit by some debris, okay?” More like the shuttle caved in on him, but he wasn’t about to tell Jim that.

“You’ve been injured this whole time and you didn’t say anything?!?" Jim was livid and practically shouting at him, obviously more panicked than enraged, but Leonard still automatically flinched back, his mind going blank. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. After Jim had had enough of listening to Leonard stammer unintelligibly, he made a frustrated noise and snapped, "Where’s the regenerator?”

“You can’t use the regen on it,” Leonard finally blurted out, trying and failing to push Jim’s hands away as the other man peeled back the bandage. The look of horror and sympathy on his friend’s face as the full extent of the injury was revealed made Leonard feel shame in the pit of his stomach.

“God. Just- why not?!?” Jim ‘s fingers lightly traced the jagged scar and the deep purple and greenish bruising, as if he could erase all the hurt with sheer willpower alone.

Leonard took a shaky breath. The truth was that the regen would work on the dermal and muscle layer, but it might make his internal injuries worse. Organs like the small intestine and the bladder were made of cells that regenerated at a much faster rate than muscle or skin. They could seal themselves off, flower into dense bouquets of tissue, or fuse with the peritoneum or other organs. He decided that Jim didn't have to know the specifics. “You’ll fuse the organs underneath. It’s complicated. You need specialized equipment that’s only available on the ship. I did what I could for now and it’s crude, but I stopped the bleeding.”

“This looks painful. You shouldn’t be carrying anything,” Jim stated, clutching his head in his hands in agonized frustration. “Oh, Bones… you should have said something!”

“Hurts like a bitch but I’ll be okay,” he lied. “And you can’t carry everything yourself. It’s just not possible.” Jim’s defeated silence was validation that Leonard was right. He watched as Jim carefully put the adhesive pad back in place. Leonard laid a hand on his arm. “Jim… I’m so tired. I need to rest. Please. Then we can climb the rest of the way.”

“Okay.”  No resistance. “I’ll make you more food. You need to eat a solid meal.”

“Before you do that, hand me my medkit, would you?” Leonard requested. Jim located the strap around Leonard and pulled the medkit back around, placing it in his hands. The doctor took out the hypo and fumbled with it, giving himself another dose of the painkiller. Then he unclipped his medical tricorder from his belt and did a basic assessment scan, and the thing immediately blinked red and screeched in warning. He quickly shut it off, but not before Jim noticed.

“What is it??? What’d it say?!?” Jim asked, looking down at him in alarm.

“My blood pressure is too low,” said Leonard. “Not critical, but low enough to be a concern.” At least, not critical yet, but it was proof he had internal injuries that he was aggravating with all this hiking. It was too bad that he and Jim weren’t the same blood type. There were a couple pints of blood substitute in the first-aid kit, probably not enough to sustain him until they were rescued if the Enterprise took their time. Still, it might be prudent to use one before his blood pressure bottomed out and he went into shock.

“Jim, you’re gonna have to play field medic for a few minutes,” he said. The captain went rigid and a strange expression crossed his face. Leonard realized it was self-doubt… something he hardly ever associated with Jim. “Look in my pack for the first-aid kit. There should be some bags in there labeled PFBOC.” Obeying, Jim quickly produced the first-aid kit and pulled out a plastic bag full of milky fluid. “See that foil packet attached? Pull the tab and there should be a sterile IV line inside with a device at the end. It’s meant to be user friendly, so you don’t have to worry about sticking me with any needles yourself.”

“Wait, are we- we’re putting this shit in you?” Jim asked, making a disgusted face. “What is it?!?”

“Artificial blood. My system’s all outta whack because I’ve lost too much blood. You’re going to help me do a transfusion.”

“I-I can’t,” Jim said, going pale.

“Sure you can. It’s easy. My daughter knows how and she’s in elementary school.”

“But she’s a McCoy,” Jim argued.

Leonard glared up at Jim, raising his eyebrow for emphasis. “Medicine doesn’t have to run in your blood to be able to do this, Jim. Now stop being a worry wort and get it together!” Jim nodded, setting his jaw. “The strap goes around my arm and the device goes on the inside of my elbow. Tighten that...it’s like a tourniquet- and press the start button. It should give you instructions.” Jim turned the watch- sized device on and waited.

“Mapping vessel structure,” said a pleasant, neutral-toned AI. “Searching for optimal insertion site. Target vein acquired. Adjust the cannulizor until target matches up with overlay on the screen. Adjust the cannulizor. Adjust the cannulizor. Adjust the-”

“This thing is kind of annoying,” Jim muttered, incrementally moving the device around until it chimed.

“Correct placement over target vein achieved. Scanning. Confirming correct placement. Sealing.” It whirred and became airtight on Leonard’s skin. “Hold bag higher than insertion site and ensure there are no kinks, loops or tears in the IV line.” Smoothing everything out, Jim held the bag in his hands. He glanced down at Leonard nervously. The device spoke again. “Cannulizing now.” Leonard flinched at the sharp sting in the crook of his arm and then the cold sensation of the blood substitute flooding his veins. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and soon began to nod off. Jim shook him awake.

“Hey, don’t pass out on me again! What do I do now?!? How do we know it worked?”

Leonard grinned weakly. “It’ll say so. Obviously. And it should show my blood pressure on the screen. Closer to 120 over 80 the better.” He patted Jim’s arm. “It’ll disengage by itself when it’s done. Relax, there’s nothing to be worried about. Just let me sleep for a while.”

Jim looked anything but relaxed. He watched the pale fluid drain out of the bag between his fingers through the IV line into Leonard’s arm. “We should have done this before we left the shuttle,” he said ruefully, but Leonard didn’t respond. He was too exhausted to keep his eyes open.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty short chapter. I was thinking of combining it with another one but it just seemed too awkward somehow.
> 
> I always thought Jim would be terrified of having to switch roles with Bones. He's simply too good at everything else, he's gotta have a weakness.
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Trouble by Coldplay  
> From the album Parachutes, 2000


	5. Chapter 5

Leonard was strolling down the brightly colored, old-fashioned avenues of Macon in the Georgia summer heat, his little girl by his side in a gingham dress. He was wearing a short sleeved button-up open at the chest, shorts, and his most comfortable pair of leather flip-flops. The humidity was strong and he basked in the rays of the hot sun. His skin was deeply tanned, unlike the pasty pallor he got from spending all his time out in deep space under the Enterprise's artificial lighting. Jo held his hand and smiled up at him, her features pretty and delicate like her momma, but her hazel eyes and dark hair so much like his own.

"Daddy, can we please go to Swirls, please?! I want an ice cream."

"Sure, sweetie, anything you want," he said. He didn't always indulge her, but today was special. Leonard couldn't quite remember why today was special, but any day he got to spend with his daughter was precious.

"Bones…"

Looking over his shoulder, he saw Jim leaning up against a magnolia tree in his muddy survival suit, his face grimy with grease and dried blood from the ugly gash over his eye, one side of his face bruised and blonde hair windswept, out of place in the peaceful setting. He pushed off of the tree trunk, making a beeline for them. Pedestrians walked around him, oblivious to his presence. Leonard tightened his grip on Jo's hand.

"You're going to scare her, dammit," he said angrily.

"Bones, wake up," ordered Jim.

"What?" He held Jo close to his side, confused and uncertain. After a few tense seconds passed, he said, "Come on, sweetie, let's go get that ice cream," and turned back around to keep on walking to their destination. With single minded purpose, Jim strode over and grabbed Leonard's arms from behind, dragging him away from Jo. She burst into tears, reaching for him.

"Daddy!"

"Let me go, Jim!" Leonard bellowed angrily.

"Bones, come back to me," Jim murmured in his ear, possessively wrapping his arms around his chest. He pulled Leonard under the shade of the magnolia tree. Leonard gradually ceased his struggling, and he looped an arm up and back over his shoulder, cupping the back of Jim's head and burying his fingers in his hair. He craned his neck back and moaned softly, pressing his cheek to Jim's. Thick, shiny leaves blocked out the sunlight until he couldn't see anything but darkness and bright light piercing through tiny gaps in the leaves like a starfield. Large, ghostly Magnolia blossoms hung heavily around them in the glittering void, white as snow. Their scent was cloying, they were close and soft, like Jim, and as he watched, they all began to bleed.

He lunged, the dream melting away. "Joanna-!"

"Shhh… it's okay, Bones. You were dreaming."

He opened his eyes. Jim had his gloved hands splayed on Leonard's chest, holding him down and peering at him with worry written all over his face. All around them was snow, gray rocks, the damp chill. A faint breeze was blowing, whistling through the mountains ominously.

"I'm sorry I had to wake you up, but I think another storm might be coming," Jim said. "I know you're tired, but we really need to get up the mountain as soon as possible."

"How long was I out?" asked Leonard. He slowly sat up with Jim's help.

"Two hours. Here, eat this." Jim pushed a warm MRE into his hands. Leonard saw that Jim had tucked him into his sleeping bag and there was a glowing pile of rocks next to them, heated up hundreds of degrees by a phaser. They were in a slightly different place than where he'd collapsed and he realized Jim must have carried him. His cheeks flushed.

"Thanks, Jim," he said sincerely. He picked away at his food, eating as much as he dared.

"We can leave one pack here and I can come back for it, if we have to," Jim said.

"No, I can carry it," Leonard assured him. He swallowed thickly, feeling nausea threaten to creep back if he took another bite, and put the tray down. Jim eyed him.

"Is that all you're going to eat?"

"I don't want to push it," said Leonard.

"You barely even ate anything!" Jim exclaimed, and Leonard supposed the stress of having to deal with the walking wounded was finally getting to him. Usually that was Leonard's responsibility.

"I'm trying my best," he said wearily.

"Please don't lie to me any more, Bones. Please." Leonard looked down into the fiery glow of the rocks, unable to meet Jim's gaze. Jim reached out and tilted Leonard's chin up with his fingers, forcing the guilt-consumed man to look at him. "Are you sure you'll be able to make it the rest of the way?"

They were startlingly close, and he could see the rings of darker indigo blue around the edge of Jim's irises. There was desperation there, and something else Leonard couldn't quite name, that made his knees go weak. At that moment he would promise Jim anything. Anything at all.

"I'll do it for you," he heard himself say.

Jim searched his eyes, then let go of Leonard's chin. "Then pack up, we're leaving," he said, and stood, kicking snow over the rocks to cool them. Leonard extricated himself from his sleeping bag, rolled it back up, and tied it to his frame. He felt marginally stronger now, thanks to the combination of the transfusion and sleep. When they put their packs back on, he hardly noticed the ache from his wound. The one in his heart was far more distracting.

 

* * *

 

 They made it safe and sound, somehow, even though Jim had to help boost Leonard up over the steep clusters of rock that obstructed their path, and he was fairly winded by the time they arrived at their destination. The sky had begun to darken again, and it was a race against time to find a decent spot where the bright orange tent wouldn't simply blow away in the strengthening winds as they set it up. They found an overhang that mostly protected them from wind shear, but it was also starting to get bitterly cold again. Jim cleared the snow from the ground with his phaser first, then secured the tent directly to the rock using the micrograv clamps built into the end of each tentpole. He did the same for the beacon, leaving it exposed, open to the sky.

While Jim was busy working on the beacon, Leonard arranged everything inside the tent. He was surprised that a tent this size was meant for four people, because it seemed like there was little space to share for two with all their equipment inside. He immediately set up the heater in a corner, hoping its warmth would ricochet off the interior surface of the tent and build up the temperature sooner rather than later. His breath was visible, and he was quickly growing colder and colder, starting to shiver uncontrollably. He supposed it was from all the sweat he'd worked up during the hike, and the fact that he wasn't moving around enough to generate heat any more. By the time Jim came back in from outside, Leonard had laid out their sleeping bags and was sitting as close to the heater as possible, huddled in a shivering little ball.

"Too cold for you, huh?" laughed Jim. Leonard gave him the finger. "Well, don't hog all the heat. Even this Iowa boy needs to warm up." His nose and cheeks were pink from the frosty air. Against all his instincts, Leonard uncurled his body and moved to the side to give Jim room to sit next to him. Jim rubbed his hands over Leonard's shoulders, trying to use friction to warm him.

"Y-you're f-freezing," Leonard said, annoyed, batting him away. Jim laughed again and took off his hat and gloves, placing his outstretched palms as close to the heater as possible. Leonard did the same.

"What we need is a hot drink," Jim said. "I think there's some instant coffee in the rations."

Leonard reached out a hand to stop Jim from rummaging through his pack. "M-maybe we sh-shouldn't be w-w-wasting all our r-rations r-right away." Jim seemed so sure that the rescue team would be there any minute, ever the optimist.

"We can share it," he said, shrugging. Leonard didn't protest further because hot coffee sounded amazing. Jim plugged his canteen into the heater and after a few minutes, poured hot water into a tin mug. He stirred in the packet of coffee crystals, then held it out to Leonard. The scent alone was invigorating.

"One espresso mocha latte, with three sugars, whipped cream, and caramel drizzle," he said in his best impression of an apathetic hipster barista. Leonard took the mug from his hands, wrinkling his nose.

"Ugh, th-that s-sounds like s-something y-you'd order, ya w-weirdo." Jim knew that Leonard preferred his coffee black and plain. He took a sip and felt the divine liquid warm him from the inside out. The heat of the mug seeped into his palms. After another sip he passed it back to Jim. "You sure you'll be able to drink it without all that sugar added in?"

"I'm prepared to make sacrifices in order to survive," Jim declared. He took a sip and all the perfectly proportioned features of his face scrunched up unattractively in a hilarious display of revulsion. "Bleurgh. This is gross, Bones. How can you stand it?"

"I'm already bitter enough so I guess all the bitterness gets cancelled out," Leonard replied. Jim peeked at him over the rim of the mug.

"I guess none of this helps the bitterness," he said, gesturing around them with a sad little smile, and Leonard realized that he was trying to pass off a serious inquiry as a joke.

"It's just my nature, Jim. But if it makes you feel any better, I'm not going to hold a grudge against you for the rest of my life." Which wouldn't be long, judging by what he had seen on the tricorder. Holding a grudge at this point would be petty. "I already told you that none of this is your fault."

"You were angry that I put you on the away team."

Leonard sighed. "I know I said that, but everything we'd gone through had just kind of hit me and my reaction was triggered by stress. To be honest, I do like coming along on your adventures. It's exciting, and fun, and it's incredible from a research point of view. I never dreamed I'd be CMO of the Federation Flagship. If it wasn't for you I'd probably be stuck pulling double shifts at Starfleet Medical in San Francisco, or a lousy space station somewhere, so… thank you." He poured everything into his words, all the gratitude, admiration and unrequited love he had pent up inside, not sure if he'd get another chance to express his feelings. "Thank you for believing in me and showing me how much more I can accomplish when I get past my own fears."

Jim looked stunned. "Bones...you're gonna make me cry," he said in mock seriousness, trying to play off his response as just lighthearted banter, but Leonard knew better. Passing the mug back to him, Jim said, "Spock may be my first officer, but you'll always be my number one guy, Bones." Jim gripped Leonard's shoulders, looking deep into his eyes with those baby blues that pierced him to his very core. For a fleeting moment, they overflowed with profound devotion. Then he pulled away and slapped one shoulder for emphasis, grinning that goddamn shit-eating grin of his. Leonard allowed a true, unrestrained smile full of all his affection to shine for this man, this crazy Adonis who for whatever reason, bestowed him, an unworthy sad sack of potatoes, with so much loyalty and trust.

"Go ahead and drink the rest, I'm totally beat. I'm gonna turn in," Jim said with a yawn. Leonard nodded, feeling guilt slowly eating away at him again. Of course, Jim was probably way more exhausted than he'd let on. He had worked twice as hard today, since Leonard had been so useless. While Leonard finished off the remainder of the coffee, he watched as Jim pulled his comm, tricorder and phaser off his belt and put them next to his sleeping bag, then curled up on his side. He was out within minutes. Leonard did the same, making sure to dose himself with another hypo of pain meds before he lay down, but kept the dosage minimal this time. He didn't want a repeat of what had happened that morning when he woke up. Also, just in case his condition worsened overnight, he didn't want to die in a drugged out blur… he wanted to take the glow from the mutual camaraderie they'd just confessed to each other to the grave. It was as close to a declaration of love that he'd ever gotten out of Jim.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love Magnolias, and there's a lot of them around where I live. I always thought they seemed alien compared to other trees. If you've never seen one in person, they have huge, very leathery leaves and the flowers are also very thick and large, almost cartoony, and they smell divine. They end up turning into fuzzy seed pods that look like fleshy orange pine cones. The seeds are blood red. I only recently learned that the southern magnolia is an evergreen and one of the Earth's oldest flowering plants, remaining nearly unchanged for over 100 million years. They pre-date bees, so even if climate change ends up killing off all the bees, they'll probably still flourish.
> 
> Magnolias represent dignity, nobility, strength and loyalty, and the yin side of every person (caring, loving and gentleness) and they've been used in Asian herbal medicine for 2,000 years.
> 
> Okay, now that our botany lesson is out of the way...
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve soundtrack:
> 
> Star Charmer by Grinderman (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)  
> B-side of the single Heathen Child, 2010
> 
> Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip  
> From the album Made in the Dark, 2008


	6. Chapter 6

Blame it on the coffee, the storm raging outside, being mortally wounded, or his anxiety, but Leonard just could not sleep. He'd get close, would teeter in that space where he wasn't exactly awake but still wasn't unaware of the world, and he'd quickly slingshot back as he felt a chill run through him. Soon he was wide awake and shivering, facing Jim's back, which was only a couple feet from where he lay. Jim was close enough to reach out and touch, but instead of giving in to his foolish impulses, Leonard settled for letting his eyes rove over what his hands couldn't. Underneath the geometric seams and angles of his survival suit, the curve of Jim's ribs rose and fell as he slept peacefully in the faint glow of the heater. Leonard's mind kept running in circles. The guilt of continuing to lie to Jim weighed down on him heavily, especially after their conversation. The fact of the matter was that soon, Leonard would reach a point where he could no longer keep up his ruse. Jim would no doubt be upset once he found out Leonard had been neglecting to disclose the full extent of his injury. Though, to be fair, Leonard hadn't seen the official tricorder results until that afternoon. Now he was certain he was staring death in the face if the Enterprise didn't rescue them within 48 hours. From that lovely line of thought, his mind leapt to his daughter, and he wondered how Starfleet would break the news that her father had died doing a routine survey of some distant planet. Perhaps Jim would take care of it personally, assuming he survived.

Jim would have to beam down to Macon and show up at Joss's door- the door of the home they'd built together, that she'd taken from Leonard in the divorce- in full Starfleet dress uniform, with the gloves, pips, medals, peaked cap and everything. Jim looked damn good in dress grays- hell, putting someone as hot as Jim in a uniform like that should've been illegal. Knowing Joss, she would probably try to flirt with him, which wouldn't go over well at all. And then Jim would wait in the living room while she went to retrieve Jo from her bedroom, and Jo would finally meet Jim in person under the worst circumstances possible. Jim would present Jo with Leonard's personal belongings and tell them what happened, that Starfleet would send some officers out to officiate the burial, and Jo would be devastated. She might hate Jim Kirk for the rest of her life after that. If Jo grew up to despise Leonard for the divorce, and the long absences, and dying before he had a chance to fulfill all his promises to her, that was one thing. It was another to drag an innocent bystander into it.

Shuddering, he tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable. Wind and snow buffeted the thin wall of the tent next to him, driving the temperature down and making the tent flap and shake, straining against its moorings. Every so often, the crack of a lightning bolt echoed across the sky, sometimes terrifyingly close. Leonard wished he had a pair of earplugs. He had no idea how Jim could sleep so soundly through all this ruckus.

Another thought occurred to him. Since Joanna was a minor, Joss would be responsible for managing whatever compensation Jo received from Starfleet for another decade. Maybe Joss would find a way to hijack that, too. He accidentally let out an agonized groan at the thought, and he heard Jim stir beside him.

"Bones…" Jim's sleepy voice floated over to his ears. "Bones, what's wrong?"

Not answering because he felt ashamed to have woken Jim out of much needed sleep for issues related to his idiotic life choices, Leonard just squeezed his eyes shut and continued to shiver in a silent ball of frustration.

"You cold?" Jim asked, his voice much closer, as if he had rolled over to face Leonard, and then Jim's warm hands were investigating him. "Geez, you're shaking. ...Come here."

Leonard opened his eyes. Jim was tugging him out of the flap of his sleeping bag, urging him closer, trying to pull him into an embrace to warm him up with his own body heat. It wasn't an unwelcome gesture- quite the opposite- but Leonard balked because it hurt to be so close to Jim without being able to have him the way he truly wanted. In an attempt to keep a respectable distance, Leonard reached out and braced himself against Jim's shoulders, trembling, and Jim simply saw it as an invitation to vigorously rub his hands up and down Leonard's arms and his side.

"Oh, my aching Bones," Jim said.

Leonard cringed at the terrible pun, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth nevertheless. He slowly relaxed and let his elbows bend, his hands automatically sliding down to Jim's chest. Jim's jacket was open, and his thermal was stretched tightly across his torso, radiating heat. Burying his face in Jim's shoulder, Leonard wound both arms around Jim's ribs, then pushed his palms up underneath the back of Jim's survival jacket. He could feel the other man's shoulder blades and his muscles flexing as Jim rubbed his hands in opposite directions up and down Leonard's back. Leonard stayed like that for a while, content to just lay in Jim's arms, soaking up all of his warmth.

Jim's hands slowed but continued stroking him, almost… petting him, really. While it was soothing, Leonard's mind was going places it shouldn't. And what exactly was running through Jim's head? He was a very tactile person. Maybe Jim was just as anxious as Leonard about their predicament and needed physical touch to ground him. However he chose to rationalize it, it felt good, and Leonard was possessed by the overwhelming need to feel every inch of Jim underneath his fingertips.

Jim had a beautiful back, and Leonard had admired its graceful curve and musculature for years, able to envision every part of it in his mind down to its very last freckle. He dragged his hands from Jim's shoulder blades to the base of his thoracolumbar fascia, fingers dipping into the indentation that ran down his spine, passing over the broad planes of his latissimus dorsi. His fingers worked small circles into Jim's lower back, just above the iliac crests. There was a birthmark there, he knew, a faint atoll on a sea of velvety skin. Jim arched against him reflexively, one hand coming up to pull through Leonard's hair down the nape of his neck, the other tightening around his waist, their knees bumping together. Bringing his hands back around, Leonard cupped Jim's external obliques, pushing his palms up to the serratus anterior over his ribs, running his thumbs back and forth over the clusters of muscle. The pads of his fingers registered a faint irregularity in the bones on Jim's right side, an injury from his youth that hadn't been tended to immediately. It was something Jim had never spoken of, but Leonard had never pried. Perhaps it was due to a motorbike accident, or a fight, or even a kick to his ribs when he was a child. The high probability of the latter made Leonard too angry to continue dwelling on it, so he moved on. His hands traveled around Jim's torso to meet at his upper back again, caressing over the bulging wings of the trapezius muscles that faded up into Jim's neck. In his mind's eye Leonard saw their light dusting of faint freckles that usually disappeared into a tan once Jim got enough sun. Leonard slowly dragged each of his large hands down Jim's back in a continuous loop, wanting to clutch at handfuls of him. Jim's hands were moving as well, tracing the lines of Leonard's survival suit, wandering all over him, sliding back up to caress Leonard's hair, then tug it from behind. When Leonard pulled his head away from Jim's shoulder at his urging, he was stunned at the sight of Jim's face. Jim's cheeks were flushed, lips parted, eyes dark with desire. His thigh provocatively slid up between Leonard's legs, and he deliberately brought his hands up to cup Leonard's face, pressing their foreheads together. Unable to help himself any longer, Leonard pushed his hands up between them to bury his fingers in Jim's hair, raking through the silken blond strands over and over again. Jim's eyes closed in rapture, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks, wrapping his arms around Leonard's torso and pulling him even closer. Their bodies were flush, and now Leonard could feel Jim's heart pounding against his chest. Leonard's hands seemed to have a mind of their own. They dragged down the sides of Jim's face, over his shoulders, and clawed at the heavy padding of the survival suit jacket that curved over his deltoids and thick biceps, while Jim wound his fingers in Leonard's hair and clutched tight, making him exhale a moan.

He couldn't go on like this, couldn't keep lying and continue doing… whatever this was. Leonard had no idea how everything had gotten so out of hand. "Jim… Jim, what I wanted to tell you-" he said, nuzzling a spot just under Jim's jaw, caresses intensifying as they both practically pawed at each other, Jim panting hot and heavy in his ear.

"Tell me," Jim breathed, and instead of admitting that he was slowly bleeding out inside, like he should have, Leonard crossed his arms behind Jim's head and kissed him.

Jim pressed into the kiss, tilting his head and opening up to Leonard's lips. His clever tongue caught Leonard's as it slid inside his mouth, coiling around it, teasing and caressing as dexterously as the fingers which were busy unzipping Leonard's jacket. Once it was open, Jim rucked up the thermal he'd revealed, his fingers mapping every inch of bared skin. They kissed languidly, exploring what was once off-limits to each other for long minutes until they had to break apart to breathe. Leonard couldn't believe this was happening. Maybe he was hallucinating as he lay dying. Jim's lips were exactly how he had always imagined them- plush and soft and incredibly addictive.

"Tell me more," said Jim, eyes dancing.

Leonard grew bolder at the invitation, feeling giddy. He mouthed hungrily at the line of Jim's jaw, a day's worth of unshaven stubble prickling at his lips, kissing and nipping his way down Jim's neck. Lingering with every kiss, he felt Jim hitch his hips and moan low in his throat as Leonard hit a sweet spot at the juncture between Jim's neck and shoulder. Pausing there, he sucked a bruise into the sensitive skin as his hands wandered lower to Jim's waist, then slid around to cup his ass and squeeze. "Booonnnesss", Jim groaned, drawing out the nickname, wrapping a leg around the back of Leonard's thigh for leverage as he ground against him. The insistent press of his hard length made Leonard surge with arousal, and he tugged at Jim's survival suit jacket.

"Take it off," he said urgently, his voice throaty and rough, and they untangled themselves just long enough to shrug off the heavy garments. Not willing to wait, Jim reached over and impatiently pulled up the hem of Leonard's thermal as well.

"God, I've been wanting you to take this nasty thing off all day," he uttered. Laughing, Leonard lifted his arms, allowing Jim to invert and pull the offending garment over his head. Jim's hands snaked up Leonard's torso, groping at it, and he bent his head to press fervent kisses into his pecs. As he slowly pushed Leonard back down to the sleeping bag, he said, "You have an incredible body, Bones, and it drives me crazy that you never want to show it off." The tip of Jim's tongue teased a nipple which was already pebbled and sensitive from being exposed to the cold air. Leonard inhaled a hiss as Jim's mouth closed over the hard nub, bathed it with his hot tongue, then lightly raked it with his teeth.

"It isn't- I'm not-"

"Shut up, Bones, you're gorgeous." Jim's lips and tongue continued leaving a trail of lingering kisses across his broad chest. "Most guys have to work out like mad to get this kind of build, and with you it's just all natural. You're like a Greek god or something." As Jim set to work on his other nipple, Leonard's hands reached over Jim's bent back to fist handfuls of his thermal, tugging it up over his shoulders. Jim straightened and, grabbing his shirt, raised his arms over his head, showing off his athletic physique as he pulled the thermal off the rest of the way. Bending back down, Jim asked, "Do you know how long I've wanted you?" in a husky tone Leonard had never heard him use before. Fiery blue eyes held his gaze as Jim's hands wandered southward, caressing Leonard's narrow waist and tight abs. Leonard could only stare in mute anticipation, shaking his head. "Ever since I saw you all cleaned up in your cadet reds the first time, and they fit you like a glove. Not to knock your disgruntled divorcee style, but you kind of looked like a hobo on the shuttle." A laugh erupted from Leonard's throat, followed by a startled curse as Jim accidentally palmed the bandage on his belly. Cringing, Jim quickly pulled his hand away. "Bones, I'm so sorry-"

"Don't worry about it," said Leonard. "In fact, don't worry about me at all-" he took advantage of the distraction to flip their positions, using brute strength to roll Jim over and straddle him. Jim always enjoyed a good tussle. Leonard kissed him hard and deep to muffle his yelp of surprise. Jim melted into the kiss eagerly, trying to reach for Leonard's pants, but Leonard pinned his wrists to the ground.

"I said, don't," he barked. Jim struggled, bucking up against him, then lay back, breathing hard.

"Shit, you're  _intense_  when you're horny," he said, but there was a hard glitter in his eyes and a curve to his lips that goaded Leonard on.

Leonard leveraged all his weight onto Jim's wrists and bent over him so that they were cheek to cheek. He sucked Jim's earlobe into his mouth, nibbling around the edge, then spoke directly into his ear in a low rumble. "This isn't even half of what I want to do to you… but I'm injured, so I'm taking it easy." Jim bucked against him again in a frenzied attempt to get free. Leonard held him down, licked and sucked at the sensitive spot just under Jim's ear, then dropped his lips to Jim's shoulders, covering them with open-mouthed kisses. He sunk his teeth into the slope of Jim's left trapezius, just enough to make Jim writhe beneath him, keening. When Leonard finally let go of Jim's wrists, Jim immediately pulled him down into a heady kiss, wreaking havoc with his lips, teeth, and tongue. They wrestled against one another, both fighting for dominance as they kissed, fingers clawing for purchase. Jim lunged and latched on to Leonard's neck, giving him a sharp lovebite, and Leonard yanked Jim's hair to pull him away, shoving him back down. Panting, he lightly ran a thumb over Jim's bruised lips. His side ached, but he ignored it in favor of the heat pooling in his groin.

Leonard began to crawl backwards, dipping his head to Jim's midsection, sensually nipping, kissing, and lapping at his smooth, salty skin, feeling every twitch of his taut muscles. He let his skillful hands caress whatever his lips and tongue weren't busy ravishing, his fingers outlining every curve and divot of flesh. Jim moaned softly and, little by little, his entire body relaxed. Eventually Leonard reached Jim's belly button, and he nuzzled the light trail of hair below, following it down to where his fingers were unclasping Jim's utility belt. Popping the button and unzipping the fly of Jim's survival suit bottoms, he smoothed his hands over Jim's slim hips and pushed his pants down just enough to expose his boxer briefs. He kissed around the bulge of Jim's erection, letting his hands slide up over the creases along Jim's hips to lightly brush the sides of his stomach. Jim shuddered.

"Underwear today?" Leonard inquired, his mouth hovering over Jim's bulge, fingers playing along the waistband of his briefs.

"Wasn't expecting to get laid," Jim gasped.

"So, everytime you go commando you're expecting to get laid?"

"Well, not every-  _Ahh!_ " Jim quivered as Leonard pulled his briefs out of the way and gripped his shaft, giving it a firm stroke. " _Bones._ "

Grinning, Leonard swirled his tongue over the tip of his cock, tasting the tang of precome, sweat and musk that made up Jim's raw flavor. A hot shower would have been indulgent for them both, but somehow he preferred taking Jim like this, all natural and gritty and devoid of Jim's metrosexual tendency to overgroom himself.

Concentrating on Jim's pleasure, he swallowed him down and bobbed his head slowly a few times, then pulled off his heavy length, sucking hard. Jim squeezed his eyes shut, trying to catch his breath, fists gripping the sleeping bag tightly. Leonard gently fondled his balls, licking generously up the underside of his cock, then closed his lips around the head, rapidly flicking his tongue underneath the glans. Jim's hands leapt to his hair and held on tight. There were ways Leonard knew he could make this very memorable for him, and he wanted it to last, to outdo all of Jim's flighty conquests that had come before. Maybe this was just another fun romp for Jim, a little bit of fooling around to relieve the tension of being trapped in close quarters, but this might be Leonard's last chance to savor what he'd always craved.

Wrapping his lips around his teeth, he engulfed Jim's heated flesh once more, slicking it up. Jim eagerly thrust into his mouth, the tip of his cock bumping against the back of Leonard's throat, and Leonard repressed the urge to gag, coughing. Annoyed, he pressed Jim's hips down to the floor and pinned his thighs with his elbows.

"Jim, behave," he commanded.

"You're one to talk!" Jim exclaimed, staring down at him in exasperation. Leonard licked his lips and gave Jim a devilish grin.

Circling Jim's shaft with his thumb and forefinger, then letting his other fingers loosely curl behind them, he began stroking in leisurely rhythm. He licked at Jim's sac, sucking one of his balls past his lips, humming around it and carefully rolling it on his tongue. Above him, Jim cried out, his fingers trembling against Leonard's scalp. Leonard took his sweet time, then moved on to the other one, simultaneously drawing Jim's cock down and out, twisting his hand as he stroked. Jim was moaning in earnest now.

"Fuck, Bones, ohhhhhhhhh fuck-"

Licking a slow stripe up the faint ridge that bisected Jim's scrotum, he replaced his mouth with the palm of his left hand and cupped Jim's balls, continuing to stroke him with his other hand as he came back up. He swallowed Jim's length down to the circle of his fingers and started sucking him off in earnest, pumping his fist in time to the rhythm of his head. Jim's grip in his hair became more insistent and he allowed Jim to set the pace with the thrust of his hips. Lips stretched wide and cheeks hollowed around Jim's thick cock, Leonard looked up from under his lashes as he bobbed up and down, trying to catch a glimpse of Jim's blue eyes, and Jim didn't disappoint. He was staring down at Leonard with a mixture of fascination and hedonistic lust, breath coming in short gasps. Leonard extended a knuckle from the hand that was cradling Jim's balls, and kneaded it into the skin of the perineum behind them. Jim threw his head back, crying out.

"Oh God, I'm gonna-!"

Leonard abruptly pulled off with a slurp, gripping the base of Jim's shaft and giving it a firm squeeze.

"Not yet," he said.

"Wha- What the  _fuck,_ Bones?!" Jim exclaimed, chest heaving, looking like he wanted to murder him.

"Shush" Leonard chided. "Just relax." He ran his hands up over Jim's abs, stroking his skin, then crawled forward and kissed his way up Jim's chest, finally reaching his lips. Jim obstinately closed his eyes and turned his head to the side. "Jim, don't be an infant," Leonard reprimanded. He cupped Jim's cheek and turned the younger man's sullen face towards his. Jim kissed Leonard, grudgingly at first, then with mounting passion, looping his arms around Leonard's neck. Leonard let his thumbs circle Jim's nipples, massaging and flicking them, reveling in the way Jim inhaled sharply against his mouth. In response, Jim sucked on Leonard's tongue and growled, rutting up against him. Reaching behind himself to push Jim's hip down, Leonard broke their kiss and scooted backwards.

"So impatient." He settled into his previous position, locking down Jim's legs and hips with the weight of his body.

"You sadist-!" Jim groaned, but Leonard could tell he was enjoying every minute of it. Jim never wanted anything he didn't have to fight for. Leonard gently grasped Jim's abandoned cock and resumed blowing him, slowly working Jim back into a frenzy.

"Yeah, just like that," urged Jim, pulling on Leonard's hair and undulating beneath him. Leonard let Jim have his way for a little while, then pulled off and continued stroking his length. He flicked out his tongue to tease at the head, gazing up at Jim with smoldering eyes. "God, you're so fucking hot!" Jim moaned. He began to vocalize every panting breath, dissolving into needy, high-pitched sounds as he reached his peak. Leonard pulled away again.

" _Fffuuck_ , Bones, I need you. I need you so bad, please," Jim begged. Leonard pet his quivering torso with long, soothing caresses.

"I'm right here, darlin'," Leonard drawled, breathing over the debauched blonde's flushed, sweaty skin. "Don't worry, I've got you. You're so incredible like this, you have no idea..." Peppering Jim's stomach with kisses, he raked his teeth over one hip, then fingered Jim's perineum. He gently massaged it, watching Jim's cock jump and twitch, drawing shuddering gasps out of Jim's lungs.

"Come on, Bones," Jim said heatedly. "Come on, finish me off!"

Leonard grinned and mouthed along the side of Jim's straining erection, amused at how vocal Jim was in the throes of passion. He let a hand roam up over Jim's belly, his fingertips teasing at the dip between his hip and his abs, and Jim's muscles reflexively clenched. Closing his fist upside down around Jim's column of sensitive flesh, Leonard gave him a few careful, fluid strokes, twisting his palm over the tip. Groaning, Jim writhed beneath him.

"Oh, God, your hands," Jim whimpered. "So good,  _so_ , so good..." Jim was so hot and bothered that his cock was steadily leaking precome, coating Leonard's fingers in slick, sticky warmth. When Jim couldn't take any more of Leonard's sweet torment, Leonard eased him back into his mouth, swallowing his length deeper and deeper with each dip of his head as Jim gasped and moaned.

"Bones, I'm so close-"

He put his hand back on Jim's shaft, pumping faster, allowing his strokes to get rough and sloppy.

" _Booonnnesss_ -" Jim whined in warning, his entire body going rigid. Leonard bobbed his head all the way down and came back up, tugging on Jim's balls as they retracted, then firmly pressed a finger into the spot behind them that drove Jim wild. Jim arced off the floor, shouting at the top of his lungs, his cock spasming hard on Leonard's tongue and flooding his mouth with hot come. As Jim's hips bucked uncontrollably, Leonard pulled off his length and swallowed, stroking Jim through his orgasm. Jim was still coming, shooting long ropes over Leonard's shoulders and across his face, finally winding down with a few weaker spurts that splashed over his chest and stomach.

"Hot damn," Leonard said, sitting back on his heels, wiping his eyes and flicking come off his fingers. He looked down at Jim and was enraptured by the sight of faint shudders still running through his long, lean torso, his head craned back in spent bliss, eyes closed, panting through bite swollen lips. His chest and stomach were painted with stripes of come that pooled around his softening cock. It was more erotic than anything from his wildest dreams, and wasn't doing Leonard's raging hard-on any favors.

"God, Bones," Jim said hoarsely, opening one eye to peer up at Leonard. He smiled and blushed. "You have a little…" Jim pointed to his face. "...well, it's a lot, actually."

"Yeah, I know," said Leonard, and curved his tongue up to lick at the corner of his mouth. "It's everywhere. Do we have any more of those wipes?"

"I think they're in your bag," Jim said. A few minutes of searching produced the packet. Leonard cleaned off his face, then kneeled next to Jim, who was still basking in the afterglow of his climax with his eyes closed and his arms folded behind his head. Leaning over him, Leonard softly kissed his lips. Jim sighed contentedly. The temptation to confess that he loved him was strong, but Leonard was gripped by fear. Everything had escalated so fast, and Jim… well, Leonard had no idea what Jim was thinking. He never stayed with any of his partners long term.

"Jim… if you wanted me ever since our Academy days, then… why didn't you ever say anything before?" Leonard asked quietly while wiping the mixture of come and sweat off of Jim's perfectly sculpted body.

"Probably the same reasons you didn't," Jim replied, and Leonard started, feeling his ears turn red. Grinning up at him seductively, Jim reached out, and Leonard bent to kiss him again. Using a simple Jiu-Jitsu move, Jim tangled their legs together and twisted, pushing Leonard over onto his back. It was so smooth and controlled, Leonard barely registered what was happening. "Unless this is a more recent development," Jim amended.

"No," Leonard said, getting flustered. "But Jim, you're with other people. All the time." He instinctively covered the bandage next to his hip with his hand.

"Trying not to think of you," Jim said. "Because I didn't want to fuck up what we had. I've never been this close to anyone… never felt this way before…" He pressed a tender kiss to Leonard's lips, his cheek, his forehead. Leonard felt Jim's hand cover the one he was pressing over the bandage, fingers slotting in the spaces between his. Jim pulled Leonard's hand away from the injury.

"Let me take care of you. I'll be so careful. I promise," he murmured, his lips brushing Leonard's once more, feather-light. Leonard nodded, his breathing shallow as Jim kneeled between his legs and began kissing his stomach with the same tenderness, his fingers tracing faint patterns over his skin, avoiding his injured side. He carefully undid Leonard's belt clasp and fly, cupping his girth, squeezing it through the fabric of his briefs."You're so hard," Jim uttered low in his throat. Leonard groaned.

"You don't know what you do to me," he said desperately. Jim bent his head down and mouthed at the outline of his cock. Stomach muscles jumping, Leonard attempted to breathe evenly through his nose. Jim's teeth closed on the elastic of Leonard's briefs. He tugged them down, simultaneously hooking his fingers around the flaps of Leonard's pants to widen them and give him more room.

"Geez, Bones. Where've you been hiding this?" Jim's fingertips gingerly grazed his jutting member, following it's slight upwards curve to the glans, which was so engorged that it was almost purple. "You're even bigger than I imagined," he said appreciatively. He pressed gentle, wet kisses to the shaft, each kiss higher than the next. Pausing over the head of Leonard's cock, he slowly circled it with the tip of his tongue, then teased the slit. Beads of precome oozed out, and Jim delicately lapped them up. He then slathered the entire head with the flat of his tongue, puckered up his lush lips, and gently blew. The sensations were exquisite, the view positively explicit.

Shuddering, Leonard covered his face with his hand and moaned into the heel of his palm. "Ah, Jesus-"

"Shhhhh, Bones…," Jim soothed, and let a single fingertip trace around his balls. "Don't get too excited, now, you might strain yourself." Leonard peeked across his chest from underneath his hand to see Jim looking up at him with a playful grin, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief, and of  _course_  Jim would make it all into a game-

As he held his gaze, Jim opened wide and slid all the way down Leonard's cock. Leonard was enveloped by the wet heat of Jim's mouth, cradled by the slide of his tongue, could feel him relaxing his muscles and pulling him deeper until Jim's nose was almost flush against his stomach. Trembling from the self-control it took to keep from thrusting into that tantalizing heat, Leonard forgot how to breathe. Applying the perfect amount of suction, Jim slowly, very slowly, pulled back up. All of the air rushed out of Leonard's lungs and he gasped like a fish. God, he was drowning, drowning in those eyes…

Jim lovingly lapped and mouthed at Bones' length, every movement lazy as the slow drip of molasses. His fingers teased at Leonard's hip, then stroked his side. "You all right there, Bones?"

"Not -gonna last- much longer," he uttered brokenly. Jim eased him into his mouth again.

"Hmmmmmmmm," Jim pondered, vibrating around his cock.

"Jim-"

Delicately fingering his balls, Jim pretended to be distracted. "Hmmmmmmmm?"

"Jimmmmm-" He could feel himself winding up, almost at his peak.

Head bobbing with agonizing slowness, Jim hesitated each time he came back up in order to let the anticipation build, then he swirled his tongue over the head of Leonard's cock as if it were an afterthought. Leonard reached out and ran his fingers through Jim's beautiful blond hair. It really was perfect, soft and silky and glowing golden in the ethereal light of the heater, even after all they'd gone through. One of his hands slipped lower, fingers cupping Jim's strong jawline, his thumb caressing the fine curve of his cheekbone. Partially pulling off, Jim's tongue teased at his frenulum, doing acrobatics Leonard didn't think were possible.

" _Jim-_ " he whimpered, writhing. "My  _God,_ Jim-"

The tips of his fingers dancing across Leonard's hypersensitive skin, Jim said, "Are you going to come, Bones?"

Leonard uttered an inarticulate, desperate sound, teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Jim's fingers abruptly curled around his length and he pumped Leonard firmly, sucking the tip of his cock into his hot mouth, all the slow sweetness of his earlier attentions gone. Leonard cried out, his pleasure cresting all at once. Stars burst behind his eyelids and he was pulsing in ecstasy, shooting his load down Jim's throat. Jim swallowed all around him, his mouth and fingers wringing every last drop out of his throbbing cock.

The pain in his abdomen flared, and for a brief moment, pain and pleasure mingled in a novel combination that threatened to fry his brain. He fell back, dazed and limp. It was a while before he realized Jim was snuggled up next to him, stroking the hair on his chest.

"Bones."

"...Huh?" said Leonard. Jim rested his chin atop Leonard's torso.

"You okay?"

"I'm dying…" he heard himself say.

Jim chuckled. "I tend to have that effect."

Leonard gently cuffed him and felt his heart swell when Jim directed a pout at him, then smiled and kissed his chest. He didn't want to die… he wanted more of this. So much more. He felt tears welling up, and closed his eyes against them. One slipped out and slowly rolled down his cheek.

"Bones?"

"I…"

"Are you in pain?"

"...I need to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago." He opened his eyes. Jim was looking up at him with pure adoration. He reached out and cupped Leonard's face.

"You don't have to say it. I already know," he said, low and tender, and kissed Leonard so sweetly that his toes curled.

"You do?" Leonard asked, confused.

"Of course. I love you too," Jim said, caressing his cheek.

Leonard threw his arms around him and pressed his lips to the top of Jim's head. He was choking back tears, and suddenly it was all too overwhelming. What he needed to do was just calm down, close his eyes, and take a second to regroup before he could continue and say, "Well no Jim, to clarify what I meant, I should have told you the moment I woke up in your lap yesterday that I'm probably not gonna make it." Gradually getting his breathing under control and repressing the urge to sob his heart out, he got to the part where he closed his eyes and went no further.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, if you were just here for the porn, there you go, but please stick around for more plot.
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp  
> From the album Felt Mountain, 2000
> 
> Come Undone by Duran Duran  
> From the album Duran Duran (The Wedding Album), 1993


	7. Chapter 7

Being woken up by Jim's scratchy kisses was much nicer than an alarm.

"You're sexy with a beard," Jim said, running his fingers through Leonard's stubble.

"You're just sexy," said Leonard, "with anything." He felt groggy, like he couldn't wake up all the way.

"Even an evil goatee?"

"Yeah…but why is it evil?"

"Even one of those horseshoe 'staches?"

"Well…"

Jim laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling up adorably. It gave Leonard a new thrill now that he knew those eyes, that smile, were all for him.

"So does that mean if Starfleet didn't have such stringent rules about facial hair, you'd look like a mountain man or something?" Leonard asked. He rolled over and pushed himself up on his arm and froze as he felt shooting pain radiating from his abdomen. Moving very cautiously, he got to his knees, and the pain didn't go away. It sat heavily in his stomach. He felt cold sweat beading on his forehead and his upper lip.

"Maybe so," Jim was saying. "Haven't you ever wanted to grow it out and see what happens?" He passed Leonard his thermal. Leonard put it on slowly, trying not to jostle his side.

"I know what happens. A beard happens. It's not that novel for those of us who don't have pretty faces to hide."

Jim already had his shirt and his jacket on, looking perfectly put together considering how late they'd stayed up and how much they'd worn each other out. Leonard reminded himself that this wasn't Jim's first rodeo. But then again, it wasn't Leonard's either, so what was his deal? Goddammit, what did they even have to do this early in the morning?

"You have a very handsome face. Bones, you're the very epitome of 'tall dark and handsome,'" Jim said, grasping Leonard's jaw and tweaking his chin.

Leonard snorted derisively. "Why can't we sleep in?" he asked, trying to convince himself he wasn't whining.

Jim quirked an eyebrow, almost reminiscent of Spock. "You wanna get off this rock, right?! Man, you're useless without a cup of coffee in the morning." His eyes flicked down and he suppressed a laugh. As Jim made breakfast, it dawned on Leonard that his fly was still wide open and his junk was hanging out.

 

* * *

 

 Jim was ravenous. The man ate like he had a hole in his stomach. Except Leonard actually did have a hole in his guts, and he didn't feel like eating at all. Even watching Jim eat made him feel a little queasy. This time he didn't even try. He told Jim some bullshit excuse, like the reason he didn't have an appetite was because the artificial blood transfusion had given him nutrients and electrolytes, plus he had eaten some of that MRE in the middle of the day, and had that protein bar and coffee, yadda yadda. It sounded stupid and lame but Jim believed it because Jim trusted him. Jim loved him.

Jim loved him and he was a liar.

When they checked outside, it was crisp and clear like the previous morning and the snow was thick and deep. Jim had been prudent to move them onto the more level side of the mountain away from dangerous landslides and avalanches. He showed Leonard where to find the digital binoculars in his survival suit and as the sun peeked over the horizon, they trekked to an area near the edge of the cliff where they should have been able to see the shuttle with the coordinates they had saved in Jim's tricorder. After searching for a good five minutes, Jim made a displeased sound in the back of his throat.

"The front is still there, but the rear is gone. Must've fallen sometime during the storm," he said. Looking through the binoculars made Leonard feel a little seasick, so he just took Jim's word for it. Jim stuffed his binoculars back in his pocket and directly addressed Leonard. "I don't see any evidence that a rescue party was there while we were relocating. Let's go back. I need to work on the beacon."

Now that the status of their relationship had changed, hiking with Jim meant a lot more physical intimacy than he had ever experienced on any other away mission. They stopped briefly to watch the sun rise, and Leonard wrapped his arms around Jim, who leaned back into his embrace. Leonard found out that Jim liked to have his arm looped around his waist while they were walking so that, from time to time, he could slide a palm down to cop a feel of his backside. He wondered if they had been wearing jeans if Jim would be the type of boyfriend who always liked to have a hand in their significant other's back pocket. Not that he was complaining. It just seemed like something young people did, and Leonard was way past that stage at this point in his life. He also wasn't sure if boyfriend was the right term for Jim. Were they boyfriends now? Wouldn't they have to date first? Did this fucking disaster of a mission count as a date? If not boyfriends, were they just friends with benefits?

The heaviness and cramping in his gut were getting worse the further they hiked, and he was relieved to make it back to camp. Inside the tent, Jim set to work on trying to connect the subspace booster thingamajig to the beacon, but the beacon and the subspace thingamajig were not compatible, or they were but there was some power conversion issue that Jim thought maybe he could bypass using their heater. Leonard didn't understand any of the technical jargon Jim was using, but he did understand one thing.

"You're not going to take apart the heater, are you?! We need that to survive!" Leonard exclaimed with growing alarm. "We don't have anything else to protect us from these sub-zero temperatures. And we don't even know if the storms might get worse. What if the temperature drops even lower?!"

"I know, I know, but if we can get through to the ship, then we won't need it anyways. It's a risk we might have to take," Jim argued. "We can use our phasers to heat up rocks if necessary."

"No. As the other ranking officer on this mission I disagree. The phasers won't last forever, and when the power cells run out they'll be about as useful as a screen door on a starship. There needs to be someone left to save! Don't be rash, Jim." Leonard picked up the heater and stubbornly planted it beside him. Jim crawled over his lap and grabbed it, glaring at Leonard with daggers in his eyes.

"I need it anyways so I can try to figure out if I can connect it without taking it apart,  _Doctor_."

And there it was, their first argument as a "couple."

A few hours later, Jim had broken his tricorder down and made a general mess of the floor of the tent. He was engrossed in his tinkering, while Leonard didn't really have much to do other than try to contact the ship at regular intervals. Leonard felt on edge, strangely lethargic, and a little queasy. Along with general unease resulting from the confrontation he'd had with Jim, he was a little irritable due to the pain in his stomach becoming increasingly acute. Now that the sun was out, it was way too hot and stuffy in the tent, but he was oddly chilled at the same time. He felt lousy enough to discreetly take his temperature. It was 37.7 degrees Celsius. Not a full blown fever, but still not a good sign. He decided to replace the original adhesive pad with a fresh one and noticed the area around his injury had become swollen enough to make him have to loosen his belt. It was hard and painful and hot. Also all bad signs. Guilt and fear gripped him and ramped up the malaise he'd been experiencing all morning.

"I'm stepping out," Leonard said after he could no longer ignore the waves of nausea washing over him. If he was going to throw up, it had to be somewhere far away from the tent, where Jim wouldn't notice.

"Just be careful," Jim said. He looked up with puppy dog eyes, like he wanted to say he was sorry for being an asshole earlier, but Leonard didn't have time for that. He hurried out of the tent and made a beeline for a rock outcropping nearby that he could hide behind. After waiting out a few agonizing minutes of horrible nausea and cramping that made him double over, he finally retched and recoiled from the dark red stain slowly blossoming on the snow. Just looking at it made him sick again.

When the urge to vomit finally passed, he washed out his mouth with a handful of snow. He thanked the heavens above that the snow on this planet was not nitrogen based or hydrochloric acid or fiberglass or any number of crazy chemical compositions. But then again, if Spock had noticed that on his planetary survey, they probably wouldn't have sent a landing party down in the first place. Leonard was taking a risk with potential bacteria, but they still hadn't picked up anything organic on the scanners and if anything,  _they_  were the ones contaminating the planet.

Shaking like a leaf, he stumbled back to the tent, hoping he wasn't gone so long that it was suspicious.

"You're avoiding me, aren't you?" said Jim, pacing outside their tent. "I was beginning to worry. Well, you can't avoid me, Bones, we're the only people on this entire planet, and if you disappear for too long I'm going to come find you. I know you're probably mad, and you know what? You have every right to be mad, and I'm sorry I was such a dick."

Leonard blinked.

"Sheesh, kid, you babble more than a Universal Translator on the fritz," he said. Leonard was too ill and weak to be having this conversation standing ankle deep in melting snow. He tried to get past Jim, but the agitated man blocked the flap of the tent.

"Don't call me 'kid.' You know I hate that! You're not even that much older than me. This isn't some May December relationship we have going, ok?!"

"Don't call me 'Doctor' and I won't call you 'kid'. And to be honest, I don't know what kind of relationship we have. The lines've always been blurred all over the place. I probably shouldn't even be your doctor, Jim. It's just all kinds'a weird." He crossed his arms tightly, trying to stem his shivering. "I ain't mad at ya anyways, idiot. Seems like you're the one with a chip on your shoulder."

"Well I realize that and I was trying to apologize," Jim said. "I don't want to fuck everything up the first day."

Leonard gave him a tired smile. "Jim, I love you too much to let one stupid comment fuck up our entire relationship. If anything-" He felt a combination of exhaustion and overwhelming guilt suddenly rob him of his strength, wrecking his voice, making it waver and lose its deep timbre. "...If anything, I'll be the one who fucks it up."

Everything was suddenly off-kilter. He brought a hand up to his forehead, trying to fight off the light-headed spell, but his knees buckled and he sunk to the ground.

"Bones?!" Jim kneeled beside him, frantically clamping his hands on his shoulders to steady him. "Bones, are you okay?! Is it the blood?! Is it only temporary or something?!" He put his hand on Leonard's cheek. "You're clammy as hell."

"I need to lay down, Jim," Leonard said feebly. Slinging Leonard's arm over his shoulder, Jim grabbed him by the waist and dragged him into the tent. He set Bones down on his sleeping bag, which had been pushed back into a far corner to make room for Jim's science project.

"I'm sorry, I'll clean all this stuff up in a minute," Jim said. Holding Leonard's hand between his, Jim kissed it and pressed it to his cheek. "Tell me how I can help."

Leonard swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. "You can't- I can't even do anything about it." His own voice sounded hollow in his ears.

"What do you mean?!"

"I've been meaning to tell you, but… well, no, actually, I want to be honest with you because you've been up front with me, and I can't keep on lyin' to you, Jim. I didn't want you to worry or get distracted or to- to give up or anything on account of me." Jim looked confused and guarded, like his strongly attuned 6th sense had already sussed out something was very wrong, but he didn't want to believe it.

"Jim, that injury I have is lethal. I was impaled by a piece of the bulkhead. There was a piece of metal running through me." All the color drained from Jim's face. "I have perforations- internal bleeding- that I need surgery to fix." Leonard forced himself to look steadily into Jim's eyes. Now the blue fluctuated with a tumultuous array of emotions- shock, anger, betrayal, fear, but somehow, devotion remained.

"No." Jim looked down at Leonard defiantly. "You… you were o.k. yesterday, after the transfusion," he said, clearly in denial. Leonard shook his head.

"It helped a little but the injury's getting critical now," he said.

"We can do the surgery. Just show me how and I can-"

"We can't. We need M'Benga and Christine. I can't do surgery on myself, Jim. You don't have any medical training at all and you get jumpy enough just doing a routine blood transfusion. We do not have the tools necessary for major surgery, nor the blood, nor the anesthetic."

"So we'll get you back up to the Enterprise. They're looking for us. Once I boost the signal they'll find us." Jim's eyes blazed with determination.

"I hope so. I really do. But there's a very real chance that I'll die before that happens. ...Jim, I'm already dyin'."

Jim stared at him mutely, shaking, his grip on Leonard's hand uncomfortably tight.

"I'm sorry, Jim" Leonard sobbed, tears spilling down his cheeks. "I'm so sorry I didn't tell you. I shouldn't have waited so long, but there's just nothing we can do…"

"Bones," Jim said in a wavering voice. "Don't cry, Bones. You'll be okay. Everything will be ok." A tear rolled out of his eye, and Leonard watched it track down his face, amazed that even when Jim wept, he was just as beautiful as ever. Jim bent over and kissed Leonard's tears away, kissed the hollows of his eyes and lingered on his lips. "We'll figure this out."

Leonard was not a half-glass full kind of person, just like how he was not a morning person or partial to Spock's brand of unfeeling logic. "Jim, if I don't make it, I need you to do somethin' for me."

"You're going to make it," Jim said through clenched teeth.

"I need you to make sure my daughter gets everything that's rightfully hers from Starfleet. I'm afraid Joss might meddle, and I know it's really none of your business, but I don't have anyone else who I can trust."

"You're going to see her again and- and you're gonna take me to Macon, remember? And you'll do the jitterhop or whatever and I'll take lots of holos and use it as blackmail for when I have to take a physical." Jim smiled through the tears, rings of blue shimmering and wavering. Blinking, he wiped at his eyes, his smile turning coy. "You know, the real reason I always avoided physicals was because I was afraid I'd get a boner when you were checking me out with those legendary hands. Between you and me- you know, patient confidentiality and all- I've got a few doctor scenarios featuring you in my head that I like to envision when I need to get off-"

"That's not what doctor- patient confidentiality is for, Jim," Leonard said, blushing. "Don't get me going right now. Hurts too much."

"I didn't hurt you last night, did I?" Jim asked, gently running the back of his fingers up and down Leonard's cheek. Leonard shook his head, feeling the blush on his face deepen.

"God no. The opposite. If you could cure me with mindblowing orgasms I wouldn't be lying here right now." He sighed. "Speaking of which, it's best I move as little as possible. No more physical activity unless it's absolutely necessary."

"We can't fix you," Jim said slowly, "but we can try to keep you alive as long as possible until the rescue shuttle arrives." His eyes became clear and calm and determined again, and they focused intently on Leonard. "What can we do to make that happen?"

"Well… I can try to hold off sepsis with what I've got on hand… and you'll need to do more transfusions. There's a couple bags of synthetic blood left in the first-aid kit. But even with all that… I have less than 48 hours, Jim. The odds aren't good."

"We've beaten worse odds before. If I can just get the subspace transistor cell working, we're home free." Jim looked over his shoulder at the mix of duotronic and mechanical components on the floor, then back at Leonard. "I'll bring you the first-aid kit and help you with whatever you need, but then I have to work on the beacon." His hopefulness was infectious, and Leonard found himself going along with his plan even though he didn't really believe it was going to make any difference.

Taking his medical tricorder off of his belt, Leonard completed a scan and racked his brains to figure out how he could stabilize himself. Maybe he'd been so wrapped up in fear that he hadn't been thinking straight. He prepared a cocktail of hypos and began injecting them, one after another. When Jim came back with the first-aid kit, he was injecting himself with a final dose of antibiotics.

"Jim, I'm probably going to be pretty out of it after this," he said. "My tricorder is here and all you need to do is press the diagnostic button to initiate a scan." Leonard held the tricorder in one hand while his other hand guided Jim's finger to the button. "Wave the wand over my chest. The readout will tell you my blood pressure. When it gets too low, you'll have to do another transfusion."

"O-okay," he said, squeezing Leonard's hand.

"And we're going to do one now."

A pause. "Okay."

Jim did everything without being told this time. He had always been a quick learner. Leonard watched his nimble hands in an ever growing daze, eventually tilting his head up to study Jim's face. His thick, dark brows were furrowed in concentration, blond hair falling over his forehead in a slow cascade. The lips that had driven Leonard to such heights of pleasure were pursed, the stubbled muscle in the side of his jaw flexed. And above his darling little nose, his eyes... those fathomless eyes... were blue lagoons reflecting the blazing warmth of a

"...Midnight sun…"

"...What?" Jim was carding his fingers through Leonard's hair, holding the bag of artificial blood as it drained.

"I can see it in your eyes."

"You're delirious," said Jim.

"...more like... doped up," Leonard said. He reached out and walked his fingers up Jim's knee.

"Uhhhh...what exactly did you take?" Jim asked.

Leonard pondered this. "A little bit of everything." He exhaled a laugh as Jim's eyebrows leapt up.

"Is that safe?!"

"Who's the doctor here, hmmm?" He hummed a few bars of a descending melody at a slow, swaying tempo, then smoothly eased into the lyrics, his chops a little rusty, but full of soul:

 

" _Your lips were like a red and ruby chalice, warmer than the_

_summer night_

_The clouds were like an alabaster palace, rising to a_

_snowy height_

_Each star an aurora borealis, suddenly you_

_held me tight_

_I could see the midnight sun…"_

"That's beautiful," Jim said, entranced. "Where's it from?"

"You're beautiful," said Leonard, poking Jim's knee with a finger.

"You have an amazing voice, Bones. It's a shame you never sing unless you're wasted. Remember that time I made you sing 'Georgia on my Mind' at BowBow's?"

Leonard tried to recall the memory, but it was all a blur. "Nah, I don't remember," he said. He never remembered much about Karaoke nights.

"Everyone was floored. Just floored. I felt like a hack going on after you."

Leonard shrugged. "You sing well but you pick terrible songs," he said bluntly.

"Musical snob." Jim pinched Leonard's cheek.

The transfusion device beeped and said that it was finished injecting Leonard with a few more hours of life.

"Blood pressure stable at 110 over 70. Do not remove until cannula is fully retracted and insertion site is healed. Retracting now."

Jim waited until it was safe to take off, then undid the cuff. Leonard's head was floating.

"Thanks, Sugar," he drawled.

"Sugar?"

"Yeah," said Leonard. "Sugar. You'd rather I call ya Honey-pie? Punkin'? Sweet-pea?"

"It's all food," Jim said, shaking his head.

"It's a Southern thing," sighed Leonard.

Jim chuckled. "Must be." He leaned down and gave Leonard a peck on the lips. "I've got to go to work now. But I'll be right over there and if you need anything, just let me know."

"Alright."

Jim hesitated. "You never told me where that song was from."

"Earth. A legendary jazz musician, Lionel Hampton, wrote it back in the early 20th century. But he didn't write the lyrics. It was an instrumental until the atomic age. The story goes that one night, another musical prodigy heard the song on the radio as he was driving home, and he pulled over and just scribbled down the lyrics right off the top of his head."

"Wow… who was that?"

"Johnny Mercer. He was one of the most prolific lyricists of all time. And a Georgia-born man," Leonard said proudly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, to be honest this chapter put me in such a dreary headspace. I need to go watch a Simon Pegg movie or something.
> 
> I swear Chris Pine goes through facial hair phases where he just tries to see how weird his beards can get.
> 
> Originally, I was going to name this story "Midnight Sun" after the song that Bones sings... but then I found out that one of those sappy romance movies geared for teens that's about a girl who's dying of a rare disease just came out last year with the same title. Dammit. So instead, I named it after another lyric within the song.
> 
> I've been sketching out a few illustrations that go with this story. I can draw better than I can write but I'm not entirely sure how to post art up in here without disrupting the flow of the story, so I don't know what to do, as I am new to AO3. So if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I just got a secondhand wacom tablet so I'm trying to learn how to do digital art but I'm still more comfortable drawing with analog mediums. I'll give it the 'ol college try. (I honestly have no idea what I'm doing and I don't even have Photoshop, just Gimp. Argh.)
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve soundtrack:
> 
> No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts) by the Eurythmics  
> From the album Touch, 1983
> 
> Midnight Sun written by Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke/Johnny Mercer- sung by Julie London  
> From the album Julie, 1958


	8. Chapter 8

Leonard faded in and out of awareness, sometimes waking to Jim scanning him, sometimes because Jim was cursing loudly at the components at his feet. This time, when he opened his eyes, Jim was pressing the back of his hand to Leonard's cheek, looking grim.

"What's wrong, Jim?" Leonard asked. He felt a chill run through him and his teeth chattered. "C-cold," he bleated. "Did you take apart the heater?!"

"No, you have a fever," Jim said. He sat behind Leonard and put his arms around him, pulling him up into a halfway seated position, and just held him. His nose nuzzled into Leonard's neck.

"Make any progress?"

There was a long silence.

"No," said Jim heavily.

"It's o.k. if you can't make it work. You're only one man, Jim. You can't do everything, be everything-"

"I know what I'm doing! It should work, but the problem is that I need a charge to get it going. I need electricity, but I'm so used to optics that it never even occurred to me. The ironic thing is that none of these parts are electric. The beacon isn't electric. The heater isn't electric. It's particle based technology. We phased out most electrical components 100 years ago," said Jim, his frustration mounting with each sentence. "I tried everything- the tricorder power cell, the phaser power cell, but there's nothing I can use to convert the particles into voltage."

Leonard leaned back and tried to focus. Where could they find electricity in the environment around them? They were practically swimming in ions on this planet. He felt like he was close to an answer, but his mind kept slipping. It felt so good to be in Jim's arms, so good, like he was flying, but perfectly safe. Jim had been so calm and capable at the controls of the shuttle, even when it had been struck down by-

"Fly a kite with a key on it," he said.

"I thought of that already." Jim sounded so forlorn. Leonard had never seen him so utterly hopeless before. "We need another storm, and the one time we need it, there's nothing on the horizon. Tonight's going to be absolutely clear."

Ironically, that meant it was perfect weather for a shuttle to rescue them. Caressing Jim's arms, Leonard tried to comfort him. He looked over at Jim's side of the tent, waiting for it to slowly come into focus, and was surprised to see the chunky black tripod of the beacon crowned by its blinking blue light. It was now hooked up to the subspace transmitter by an ingenious tangle of wires.

"There's one more thing I can try," Jim said, his voice muffled by Leonard's shoulder, "But you're not gonna like it."

"What's that?" inquired Leonard.

"I can go back to the shuttle."

Leonard tried to twist around. "By yourself?!"

"It's not like you're in any condition to come with me!" argued Jim. "I'm an experienced hiker. The weather is clear and I could get down there pretty quickly-"

"No, no no! It's getting dark! Anything could happen! You could fall, or get buried by a landslide, or-"

"Or none of that could happen and I could just take apart the entire console in the cockpit, find a battery, and bring it back," Jim said desperately.

"Don't leave me, Jim. Please," Leonard begged in a small voice. "I don't want to die alone."

Jim hugged him, and Leonard felt his warm breath on the crook of his neck.

"Bones," Jim whispered helplessly.

 

* * *

 

The fever crept up and Leonard hypo'd himself with a fever reducer, which lowered his temperature but didn't get rid of the fever entirely. He was beginning to get restless, shifting around every few minutes. There were increasing gaps in his awareness. Whenever he slipped under he would come to his senses gasping and disoriented, flooded with the realization that he'd just lost an unknown amount of time, and he began to fear sleep.

Jim was still obsessing over the beacon, and at one point Leonard was startled out of his feverish haze when he heard Jim blurt out a loud, "OW!"

Crawling off his sleeping bag, he came up beside Jim, who was clutching his hand to his chest. "Let me see," he said, reaching out. "Let me-"

"I'm fine. Go lay back down," Jim said tersely.

"What happened?" Gently tugging on Jim's sleeve, Leonard coaxed his arms to uncurl. Jim was still covering his right hand.

"It's nothing… just burned myself. Like an idiot."

Leonard lightly stroked the back of his hands. "You're not an idiot. You're just tired." He gingerly peeled Jim's hands apart and inspected his blistered, seared fingertips, looking up at Jim in alarm. "This is a plasma burn!"

"Just don't worry about it," said Jim, trying to pull his hands away.

"You need to be more careful," Leonard said sternly. "What exactly are you tryin' to do now?!"

"Trying to get the fucking induction coil to spark," mumbled Jim, kicking at the cylindrical part of the transistor cell. It rocked back, revealing a sheath of tightly coiled copper wires inside. Leonard's gaze wandered past it to the heater unit and he frowned. Its front panel had been removed.

"I thought we agreed not to mess with the heater," he said slowly.

Frazzled, Jim raked his good hand through his hair, his eyes unfocused, staring into space. "I don't know what else to do."

"You're going to fry your hands down to the bone if you keep this up," warned Leonard, reaching for the first-aid kit. Jim stopped him.

"I can do it. You need to rest," he insisted.

"Jim, please," Leonard said. "I'm not completely useless, yet." He struggled to reach past Jim until Jim finally relented. Leonard dressed the burn with some salve and adjusted the settings on the regenerator, wrapping it around Jim's fingers. "Now, think happy thoughts," Leonard told him. Pressing the button that started the regeneration cycle, he placed the encased hand on top of Jim's thigh. It rested there, humming as it worked. Jim briefly closed his eyes in relief. Circling his other arm around Leonard's shoulders, he stroked the short hair at the nape of Leonard's neck, then leaned closer.

"I'm supposed to be taking care of  _you_ ," murmured Jim, a breath away from Leonard's lips, then he dipped forward and kissed them, soft but insistent. Leonard widened the kiss, letting his mind forget about everything else for a while. Jim was talented at a great many things, and kissing was no exception. The man elevated it to an art form. Leonard couldn't get enough, and held on tightly, basking in Jim's amorous affections until he grew drowsy again, and snuggled into Jim's arms.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :...(
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> You Only Live Once by The Strokes  
> From the album First Impressions of Earth, 2006
> 
> Drowning Man by U2  
> From the album War, 1983


	9. Chapter 9

When he opened his eyes, Jim was gone.

Leonard could sense his absence even before he frantically searched every inch of the tent. He couldn't feel his warmth or his heartbeat, couldn't hear the way Jim always sighed and muttered to himself, and hummed snatches of pop songs while he was working. He couldn't smell Jim. Beneath his familiar body odor and sweat, Jim had a subtle woodsy scent, like pine and earth and moss, with a hint of citrus that reflected his sunny disposition.

Grunting, Leonard pushed himself to his knees and his vision throbbed and swam. The twisting pain in his gut flared so sharply he nearly passed out. But it was nothing… nothing compared to the feeling of being abandoned. The beacon and the tools and the transistor thing were all gone and so were Jim's comm, his tricorder, and his gloves. He was probably on his way back to the shuttle.

"Dammit, Jim!" Leonard cried, pounding his fist on the floor of the tent in frustration. How could Jim do this to him?! The man he loved was lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut, and Leonard was a naive fool. His eyes landed on Jim's furry ushanka hat. He had left his hat behind, too, the idiot. Maybe he hadn't set out that long ago and Leonard could still catch up with him. Yes, he thought dizzily. It sounded like a fine plan. Jim would have to give up on his inane mission and turn around and take Leonard back to the tent. He put on his gloves and his hat and zipped up his survival jacket halfway, stuffing Jim's hat inside the tight space between his chest and his outerwear, then zipped up just enough to secure it. Crawling on his hands and knees, he emerged from the tent flap into the shockingly cold night air, then stood on unsteady legs. It hurt to walk, but he was determined to try.

After weaving a few steps over the snow, he made out a bright, pulsing light in the dark. He realized it was the beacon, and Jim was crouched next to it with their emergency flashlight, hammering away at something. As Leonard approached, Jim dropped what he was doing and leapt to his feet.

"What the hell are you doing out here?!" Jim shouted, terror flooding his face.

"I woke up, and you were gone, and- and I thought you went to the shuttle," Leonard said, his throat constricting and mangling his voice. Nearly crying from relief, he reached Jim just as he toppled forward. Jim caught him and held him upright.

"No! I just wanted to move the beacon away from the tent, so I wouldn't risk burning everything down," Jim said. "I'm not leaving you! God, what kind of an asshole do you think I am?!" His cold, gloved hand cupped the back of Leonard's neck.

"Sorry Jim, I- I should've given you the benefit of the doubt," Leonard said shakily. "I guess I'm not thinking straight." Jim gave him a condescending look that screamed,  _obviously._  "And, you forgot your hat..." He fumbled inside his jacket and held it out to Jim. "How many times have I told you that you can't go out in this weather without a hat!"

"Bones," Jim said, shaking his head in total disbelief. "How can you be worried about whether I'm wearing a hat or not when you can barely even stand up?!" He snatched the hat out of Leonard's grasp and tossed it to the ground.

Leonard scowled. "If you had a lick of sense I wouldn't need to-" He clutched at his stomach and doubled over, crying out as a painful cramp overwhelmed him.

Jim was scrabbling to maintain his grip on him. "Bones?! Bones, you shouldn't have come out here! We're going back to the tent right now-"

Leonard pushed Jim away as he felt his stomach lurch. Falling to the snow at their feet, he braced himself on his forearms, heaved up a glut of blood, then limply collapsed onto his side, coughing. He slowly rolled over onto his back. The cold air stung his lips and the dribble of wetness on his chin.

"Bones," Jim said, covering his mouth with his hand, his pale face crumpled and trembling with emotion. "God, Bones-"

Leonard barely heard him. He stared up at the sky, watching as the little puffs of his breath floated up and up, past the craggy mountain peak, through the inky, star-studded heavens, and disappeared into one of the most curious sights he had ever seen. There were dozens of neon green ribbons slithering across the darkness, fluttering like flags and intersecting one another, and as he watched, their glow intensified until the whole mountain was bathed in eerie green light. "Jim… Look," he said, awestruck, and pointed with a trembling finger.

Jim looked up from where he was kneeling by Leonard's side, a kaleidoscope of light flickering across his tear-streaked face and bursting across his wide eyes. The entire sky was alight now, bright pinks, red and violet blending in with the spectrum of greens, all exploding in towering walls of dancing, incandescent light that faded up into space. The dry air crackled around them and Leonard felt all the individual hairs on his body standing on end.

"We never saw it before because the sky was never clear," Jim said in wonder, and he lay down next to Leonard in the snow, spooning him, so they could both take in the view together. Jim held Leonard in his arms,his lips resting against his cheek, gently stroking his chest.

"So beautiful," Leonard whispered. One minute, the colors wove in and out like shimmering smoke, the next they were becoming opaque walls sectioning off pieces of the sky like sunlight blazing through an enormous stained glass window. It was terrifying and dizzying and glorious at the same time, and now he could make peace with dying out here in this no-man's land, sharing this one last otherworldly spectacle with Jim.

"Bones," said Jim softly, nuzzling into his temple. "There's so much more out there like this that we can explore together, if you can just hang on. Please don't give up. Please." Leonard didn't want to, but he was so tired… so very, very tired... and it was so tempting to rest forever in Jim's reassuring embrace.

And then, even though it should have been nearly impossible, among the countless undulating curtains of dazzling color, he swore he saw the tiny, unmistakable silhouette of a saucer and twin nacelles. "It's the Enterprise!" he uttered, his voice raw.

"Shhh. You're just imagining things," Jim said, but both their comms suddenly vibrated and chirped. Jim fumbled at his belt, propping himself up on an elbow and flipping his comm open. "Kirk here Enterprise, Enterprise, do you read?!  _Enterprise, come in!"_

"-an't ull trans ou adjust your bandwi-" It was garbled, but definitely Uhura's voice. Jim stood, swiveling the dial on the comm, the device shrieking and singing with unholy feedback.

"Can you hear me now, Uhura?! Please, keep talking! You're breaking up." Jim was curved over the comm, all his tense energy and concentration focused on fine-tuning the bandwidth, backlit by the blazing aurora.

"-ill diffic to read you cap-," said Uhura.

"The shuttle went down and we need medical evac ASAP, coordinates are 4.6057 degrees North, 74.0555 degrees West! Do you copy?!"

"-egative ptain, pl eat th ordina-"

"4.6057 North, 74.0555 West, it's on a mountain, Uhura, 4.6057 North, 74.0555 West!"

"-not able t ary ire et f c ts-" the voice faded as a particularly intense shade of magenta unfurled across the sky. Abruptly, the comm burst with static, and even though Jim tried adjusting both the frequency and bandwidth knobs to hail the ship over and over, nothing worked.

"Fuck! We were SO CLOSE," Jim cried in frustration. Snapping the comm shut, his hand curled around it in a trembling fist, then lowered it to his side, defeated. He clipped the comm back onto his belt as if it were a cement block instead of lightweight alloy, looked down at Leonard and stated, "I'm taking you back to the tent, and you're staying put."

"Jim, let me stay out here," Leonard pleaded.

"I can't."

"Why?!"

"You're dying, remember?! It's cold out here." Jim's voice broke on the word "dying." He looked absolutely drained, with dark circles under his eyes.

"I don't feel it," said Leonard. "And I want to be near you." He fought to push himself up into a sitting position, and his hat fell backwards off of his head. Removing his gloves, he wiped his mouth with his hand, leaving a smear of blood on his wrist. Jim was looking at him strangely. He began to laugh, softly at first, but then hard enough to make Leonard seriously worried that he'd had a nervous breakdown.

"What the hell are you laughing about?!" he asked.

"You look like a porcupine," gasped Jim, his blue eyes brimming with adoration and regret. Leonard patted the top of his head, feeling how his hair was sticking up all over the place. He ran his hand through his hair to try and tamp it down and it crackled with static.

A slightly embarrassed smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, he said, "This is my hot new look, Jim, get used to it." The static tingled through his fingertips and, suddenly, his brain screeched to a halt, then backed up, shutting out everything except one thought. His hair crackled with static.

_Static electricity._

In his surgical training, when they had covered safety issues, there was a whole section on static buildup. Static buildup was often an issue in hospitals during cold, dry weather. They had to use special materials that dispersed static and couldn't wear shoes with rubber soles. With enough friction, just by walking over a carpet, a waxed floor, rubbing against clothing or folding blankets, a human being could build up an insane amount of electricity- up to 20,000 volts- enough to mess up sensitive machinery, give a patient a severe shock, or even cause an explosion from chemicals and gases used in the operating room.

Leonard looked at the subspace transistor cell, wondering what would happen if he just stuck a finger in the coil.

The static from the wool and fur hat may not be enough to start the machine. They'd have to make sure they built up the most static they possibly could first. Then there was the question of the heightened ions. There were so many ions in the air, the discharge might be too much. It could even stop their hearts and kill them. He couldn't allow Jim to take that risk.

He already wasn't long for this world.

Jim was a genius, and Leonard was surprised he hadn't made the connection yet. Maybe he just assumed Leonard had hat head. Days and nights were long on this planet, around 32 hours for a full rotation. He'd been awake for almost twenty hours now, and under a lot of stress.

Leonard still had to be careful, very careful to distract him from what he was about to do. He cleared his throat.

"Hey, Jim, can I borrow your comb?"

"Sure, Bones, I think this qualifies as a red alert," Jim said, looking a bit guilty for laughing so much. He reached into his special pocket and handed it over. Leonard brandished it.

"Come here, Sugar." He patted the ground next to him.

Jim sat down. Leonard pulled the comb through Jim's hair for luck, going from the part to the tip of his forelock, arcing it into its trademark coif. The comb made a delicious sound, snapping and popping like logs in a fire. "Just had to make sure it was still perfect," Leonard said. He caressed the side of Jim's face, unable to keep the tremor out of his fingers. Jim looked good with a beard, he decided. It didn't really come as a surprise.

Jim's smile faltered a little, and Leonard patted his cheek. "Don't worry. The Enterprise will orbit back around and try to contact us again." Jim nodded and took a deep breath, putting on a brave face. "Jim…" Leonard said.

"Yeah, Bones?"

"I wanna show you something, while I still have time." The fever throbbed behind his eyes and pulsed in his abdomen, gradually sapping him of his remaining strength, but Leonard resolved to push onward. He took the ring off of his pinky. "This belonged to my father. And it belonged to his father. And so on. I'm not really sure how far back it goes. Maybe three-hundred years." He handed it to Jim.

Holding the ring up in the neon light from the aurora above, Jim studied it closely. His finger traced over the simple, stepped art deco design and the small blue stone set in the center. "Is this gold?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Leonard. He began combing his hair, forcing the static charge to progressively ramp up. "It's a rare kind of diamond, too. A blue diamond."

"Did you know gold is like the fancy high proof liquor of the universe? It only forms when neutron stars collide, but then planets with active cores distill all the particles down to the metal we covet," Jim said, rotating the ring in his fingers. "They say Earth might have a small core of pure gold at the very center of the planet. And blue diamonds are the purest of all diamonds, formed really deep down towards the core." He glanced over at Bones with new respect and admiration. "This is a classy piece of jewelry, Bones. You carry a little piece of Earth's heart around with you wherever you go."

"...I never thought of it that way," Leonard said, humbled by Jim's knowledge of the mechanics of the universe. "The family lore is that a distant ancestor won it in a poker game in France." Static popped and crackled all around the teeth of the comb, making his fingers buzz. He could feel his hair standing on end, frizzing out more each time he ran the comb through it. Busy plotting an excuse to get over to the beacon, he wasn't prepared for what Jim did next.

Jim slipped the ring on the pinky of his left hand, but it was too loose. "You have big hands," he told Leonard. Then he moved the ring over to his ring finger. "That's better," he said, and held out his hand to admire it. "It might be too flashy for me. What do you think?"

Leonard stared, speechless. He never allowed himself to even imagine Jim wearing his ring, and he wore it well. His heart breaking open, Leonard said hoarsely, "Nonsense. The blue matches your eyes."

"Was your father a doctor?" Jim asked. Leonard chuckled.

"Nah. He was a minister. He wanted me to go to the same Seminary he did, but I kinda threw him for a loop with my desire to go to med school instead."

"Bones, you could've been a preacher? That's hot," Jim said, looking up from the ring on his finger with a devious grin.

"That kind of life just wasn't for me. I wanted to help people without having to force a belief system on them," Leonard said. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he had to do. It was now or never. "Look inside the ring. There's an inscription there."

Jim took the ring off and squinted. "Where?"

"It's in the band."

"I don't see it. I need more light…"

"I'll get the flashlight," Leonard said, and using all his remaining strength, shuffled over to the beacon, careful not to let the comb touch anything, especially not the ground.

Kneeling next to the subspace transistor cell, he turned to Jim one last time. "I want you to keep that."

Jim looked up, surprised. "I can't take this, Bones."

"I love you, Jim, but I'm a dead man walking and your ship needs you," he said, and tugged the comb through his hair one last time.

Dawning realization in his eyes, Jim scrambled to his feet, threw his hand out and screamed, "BONES, NO!" but Leonard was already thrusting the comb into the induction coil of the transistor. There was a huge, sizzling snap, and he was slammed onto his back as a shower of sparks burst around him like silver rain. The wind was knocked out of him and he couldn't breathe, seized by a terrible clenching pain in his chest. The nodes on the subspace transistor cell lit up like a Christmas tree. Before he lost consciousness, Leonard saw the crowning light of the beacon flare brightly, a beam of light piercing the prismatic sky.

 

* * *

 

 There was ringing in his ears and intense pain, pain everywhere, the nerves throughout Leonard's right arm, his spine, and down his left leg on fire. His sternum was particularly sore. It felt like he'd been hit by a freighter. He took in a ragged breath.

"That's it, Bones, just keep on breathing," urged Jim, somewhere beside him. Leonard was having trouble seeing, too. The vision in one of his eyes was dim and the remaining eye was blurry and unfocused. He looked up in the direction the words had come from and could vaguely make out Jim's shape.

"How bad?" Leonard wheezed out.

"I had to resuscitate you," Jim said. Leonard felt his cool hands on his chest. "Your hand is burned pretty badly. ...You selfless bastard." Jim sounded distraught. "We could've figured out a safer way!"

"No time," said Leonard, straining to speak loud enough to be heard. "Could be other storms coming." He took another rattling breath. "Knew you'd try it yourself."

Jim bent over him, clutching at the collar of his thermal, his soft hair brushing Leonard's face. Leonard felt hot tears on his collarbone.

"There never was any inscription, was there?" asked Jim.

"No."

Jim shuddered with a sob.

"I'm sorry, Jim. Broke my oath."

Sniffling, Jim raised his head. "What oath?"

"Primum non nocere," whispered Leonard.

"First, do no harm…?" Leonard nodded, then coughed wetly. He tasted iron dripping down the back of his throat and felt blood dribble out of one nostril.

"You have to hold on," Jim said, cradling Leonard's face in his hands, Jim's breath ghosting on his lips.

"I'm sorry," said Leonard. "Tell Jo I love her."

"You tell her yourself!" Jim ordered. "You got the subspace transistor cell running! The shuttle is coming, Bones, just stay with me!" Leonard felt Jim shove an arm under his shoulders and hook one under his knees, and his stomach dropped as he was hoisted up into Jim's arms. Jim carried him a short ways, then set him down on the snow and dragged him by the armpits back into warmth. They must be back in the tent, Leonard realized. He heard Jim frantically search through their supplies, then come back and take Leonard's burned hand in his, and Leonard flinched as he felt Jim wrap a heavy weight around it. The regenerator.

"You know how… to use… that thing?" Leonard forced out.

"It's part of our emergency training," said Jim. "And I watched you do it."

"Jim... it doesn't matter any more."

"Yes it  _does._ " The regen beeped subtly as he programmed it and started the cycle. Then he heard the harmonic chorus of the medical tricorder above him, the alarm warning Jim that his vitals were way off.

"We have to do another transfusion," Jim said.

The thought of wasting another bag of artificial blood just made Leonard tired from the futility of it all. "Jim. Stop. ...It won't make any difference, now."

"Shut up, Bones! You need to fight!" There was the sound of the first-aid kit clicking open, then Jim was pulling one half of Leonard's survival jacket off, pushing up his sleeve, and running the transfusion kit's cuff up the arm that wasn't fried.

Leonard raised his eyebrows. "Maybe you should switch careers, Dr. Kirk."

"No, thanks," Jim said with a bitter laugh.

It took a conscious effort to breathe, now. Leonard's strength was fading away to nothing. Jim positioned the cannulizor on the inside of his good arm, locking it down in record time. Leonard looked down at the hand resting on his stomach, encased by the regenerator, wondering how far up the burn actually went. His thoughts began to disintegrate and run together, and everything took on a surreal quality. Every moment of time he'd spent together with Jim, the awkward, exhilarating, sorrowful, infuriating, and the passionate all flickered through his mind at once. In his blurry vision, the sleeve of his survival suit glittered and sparkled in the light of the heater. Surely, it wasn't due to something as mundane as ice crystals. It was something Jim had imbued him with, an essence that couldn't be defined, that had pierced through the scarred, crusty shell of his wounded heart the moment they'd met.

"You left some stardust on my sleeve," he told Jim faintly, then went limp.

"Stay with me Bones!" Jim's disembodied voice echoed in the darkness. Leonard felt Jim clasp his hand in a strong grip as the artificial blood flowed into his arm. "Please. I need you. Fight, Bones, come on, you cantankerous son of a bitch! Be strong!"

Leonard was too weak to even open his eyes, but he clung to Jim's hand and the sound of his voice like a lifeline. A strong gust of wind buffeted the tent accompanied by an unnatural whine, and he imagined he heard the familiar roar of landing thrusters firing, but knew it had to be wishful thinking. In the muddled delirium of his feverish state he had a vision in which a polished silver and white shuttle with red trim set down adjacent to the beacon, and booted feet clanged down the metal ramp of the rear loading doors among a cacophony of echoing shouts. Jim was desperately calling to them, unwilling to part from Leonard. It was a beautiful fantasy, but he was too exhausted to keep on daydreaming. Everything slowly faded out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's followed this story so far.
> 
> Those coordinates are an actual place that's special to me (on Earth).
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Cover Me (Full-Length version) by Depeche Mode  
> From the album Spirit, 2017
> 
> Elegia by New Order  
> From the album Low Life, 1985


	10. Chapter 10

"-alileo to Enterprise, repeat, we are on route now. Expected arrival time, approximately fifteen minutes, twenty-five seconds. Please ensure Sickbay is prepared to receive two survivors, one critically injured."

The deep voice, with its perfect diction and even tone, was so unmistakable that Leonard didn't have to open his eyes to know who was speaking. He was half-afraid that if he did, he'd discover that it was all just a delusion.

"Aye, Mister Spock, we're all prayin' it'll be smooth sailin' from here on out," came an equally familiar Scottish lilt, a bit garbled, as if it was from a speaker. There was something pressing into Leonard's face, rubbing into the bridge of his nose. He brought a trembling hand up and touched the smooth plastic curve of an oxygen mask. Slender, feminine fingers gently moved his hand away from his face.

"I think he's coming around. Len?" That had to be Nurse Chapel. She was the only person who ever called him that. He lifted his heavy eyelids with some difficulty.

His vision was no better than it had been before, but the bright, even lighting around him helped. He was stretched out on a gurney, cut out of his thermal and wrapped in warm blankets, with only his arms exposed. There was an IV drip in his vein. Behind his head nurse, a blurry pair of medics were busy monitoring his vitals and ensuring his transport straps were secure. Christine looked down at him with concern seeping through her usual immaculate professionalism. "Len, try not to move- you're a mess," she said.

Leonard had never been so glad to be on a shuttlecraft in his entire life.

He forced words out of his lips, easily falling back into his medical jargon since he was among his peers. "Christine… there's been impalement of the lower left abdominal cavity… with gastrointestinal perforation sustained from mechanical trauma due to impact… complications include peritonitis-" He paused to rest, then opened his mouth to continue listing his injuries, but Chapel interrupted.

"Compounded by electric shock leading to cardiac arrest requiring resuscitation. The optic nerve in your right eye is dead, and there's damage to other parts of your nervous system. Right hand and arm presenting with second-degree burns, the worst of which were regenerated," she said in her clear, clinical tone. "The captain told us what happened. I barely believed it until I examined you myself. You've really been through the wars, haven't you?"

"Where's Jim?" he asked, inexplicably paranoid because he couldn't see him.

"He's right over there. We had to sedate him because he wouldn't leave your side," Christine said, gesturing to his right, where his vision was poor.

Leonard turned his head as far as he could and saw Jim laying on another gurney, serene and boyish in sleep. His hands were folded neatly on his torso, and Leonard caught the golden glimmer of his ring still on Jim's finger.

"You're in good hands now," said Christine. "Just rest." Her short, platinum bob shone around her head like a halo.

He closed his eyes again.

 

* * *

 

 "Bones."

Jim's whisper blended in with muffled beeps and hums of machinery. Leonard came to his senses relatively quickly, feeling stronger and more clear-headed than he had in days. The chorus of sounds were familiar, and when he singled out the steady throbbing of a heartbeat monitor, he knew he was on a bio-bed in Sickbay.

"Bones," came the whisper again, more urgently.

Leonard blinked slowly. The vision in his right eye was totally blacked out, but the other eye was working. He swiveled his head in the direction of the whisper and his vision focused quite clearly, despite the dim light available, on Jim's form leaning against the side of the bio-bed, clasping one of Leonard's hands between his. Jim's face was clean-shaven, his hair immaculately combed. He was wearing his command gold uniform and a hopeful expression. A partial privacy curtain was pulled closed behind him.

"Jim? Am I dreamin'?" Leonard asked. He automatically reached down to touch his injury. The pain was gone, and he could feel a protective, post-surgical bandage through the hospital gown and the sheets covering him.

"No, we made it, Bones. We made it, thanks to you." Jim squeezed his hand gratefully. His voice was hushed. Leonard figured it must be some time during night shift, since sickbay was so quiet, dimly bathed in blue light from the glowing monitors.

"I seem to recall I wouldn't've survived if not for a certain field medic who had an excellent bedside manner," Leonard noted. "Or, should I say, excellent manners in bed." He cautiously gave Jim a flirtatious grin, not sure how Jim would react now that they were back aboard the Enterprise. Maybe their tryst was a one-off thing, and the unique situation they'd found themselves in had been the only environment in which they could explore their repressed feelings for one another.

Laughing softly, Jim bent forward and tenderly pressed his lips to Leonard's. Leonard put his arms around Jim and held him close, relishing the fact that they were both safe, and still on the same page.

"How long has it been?" he asked.

"About three days. M'Benga and Christine had a lot to work on, especially the nerve damage from the electric shock, so they put you in an induced coma," Jim replied.

"Did I lose my eye?"

Jim shook his head. "No, they're doing treatments on it, and it's gonna take a while to regrow the optic nerve. So you're just gonna have to look like a pirate in the meantime." Leonard brought his fingertips up to probe the silken medical patch covering his eye. "You also have some pretty wicked Lichtenberg scars," Jim added. "Chapel said they'd fade with time, which is too bad, because I think they're kinda cool." Jim lightly traced his finger up the underside of Leonard's right arm. There was a long, slightly raised red tendril that branched from Leonard's fingers, zigged and zagged across his skin up his arm, and disappeared into the sleeve of his gown. It looked like a highly detailed tattoo of a lightning bolt.

"I'm all kinds of wrecked, aren't I, Captain Perfecthair? Next you're gonna tell me I'm bald and my dick fell off," Leonard complained.

"You've got your hair, and as for everything else…" Jim reached down, ran an exploratory hand over Leonard's crotch, and gently squeezed. Leonard exhaled a faint groan in the back of his throat.

"I think that's confirmation that it's still there," said Jim, the fire of the aurora in his eyes. "Get well soon so we can do some physical therapy." Leonard's pulse was racing on the heart rate monitor, and it blared indignantly.

"Shhh, Jim, stoppit, the nurses are gonna come around," he whispered furiously. "Why are you here in the middle of the night, anyways?!"

"M'Benga told us you were finally out of your last surgery and you'd be able to see visitors starting tomorrow, but I wanted some alone time with you first," Jim said.

"Does anyone even know you're here?!" asked Leonard, cocking his eyebrow.

Jim waved his hand dismissively and laughed just a little too loudly. "Heyyy, I run this ship, I get Captain's privileges."

Leonard did his best attempt at an eyeroll with only one eye.

"Not in my sickbay, you don't. But… I guess I'll let it slide this time."

Leonard pulled Jim down into another kiss. Tracing his finger in figure eights over Leonard's chest, Jim said, "So, it looks like we earned some shore leave on Earth. Per our deal, you owe me a trip to Georgia."

"And I'll be happy to oblige," Leonard said. Before, he hadn't counted on going to Macon as a couple, and this put a whole new spin on things. It was actually kind of romantic. And, to be honest, he was looking forward to parading his fine catch in front of Joss. Normally he didn't stoop to petty drama, but there was sweet karma inherent in this turn of events. Joss could lay claim to all his material possessions, but she'd never have James T. Kirk.

"I hope you don't mind, but if we're going to Macon I need to spend some time with Joanna, too." He fiddled with the sheets. "You don't hafta come along…"

"Bones, I can't wait to finally meet her," Jim said. "I never got a chance to thank her for the cookies she sent me. And that drawing she made- you know, the one where my eyebrows look like caterpillars, and there were hearts all around the Enterprise. It was uncanny how accurate it was."

"She's got an eye for details, that's for sure." Leonard laughed at the memory of the drawing, gifts in a care package sent during the last holiday season they had to spend on board the ship, far away from Earth. He was relieved that Jim wasn't put off by meeting Jo. Jim had probably once been in her position, he realized. And anyways, Jim and Jo had chatted a few times during Leonard's vidcalls home over the years, going all the way back to their Academy days, so it wasn't like the two were complete strangers. Maybe they could all sit down and have a nice dinner together. "It's gonna be wonderful to be back on Earth, where I can actually cook instead of eating this awful replicated crap that passes for food," he declared.

"Speaking of Earth, this is yours." Pulling the ring off of his finger, Jim took Leonard's left hand in his and gently slipped it back on his pinkie."It's too bad I have to give it up, because I've been getting a lot of compliments on it." Leonard considered offering his ring to Jim permanently, but it was too soon for that kind of gesture. For now, he was content to have it returned. His pinkie would've felt naked without it. Besides, someday, if everything worked out, he might put an entirely different kind of ring on Jim's finger.

Doing an abrupt double take, he said, "Wait, did you go right back to work?" Jim looked as if he'd been caught red-handed.

"I wasn't seriously injured, Bones. Plus, if I leave Spock in the chair too long, the bridge gets wayyyy too logical."

"You went through a traumatic ordeal down there. You need to rest, dammit!" Leonard stressed as loudly as he dared.

"I rested! Chapel friggin' hypo'd me with something that knocked me out for  _hours_. And when I woke up, I was worried about you and needed to keep myself occupied, or I was gonna go out of my mind." Jim gently nuzzled Leonard's cheek. Leonard threaded his fingers through Jim's hair, stroking the smooth, blonde strands. For once, he felt... lucky.

"You know… I was wrong about something," he said. "Back down on the planet, I said I didn't have a good luck charm. Well, that's not true. I think you're my good luck charm, Jim." His fingers played with a lock of Jim's hair. "Nothing ever went right for me before I met you. And I noticed, ever since I started hanging out with you, my life's made a complete turn-around. I've been skyrocketing straight up to the stars, no looking back." He caressed Jim's cheek and held him in place, looking deep into the comforting solace of his blue eyes. "I'm the luckiest man in the galaxy, as long as you're by my side."

"Damn, Bones…!" Jim said, his cheeks turning pink. He covered Leonard's hand with his own. "You make me feel like a total caveman sometimes. I think you're insanely hot, and you cook a mean bowl of sausage and grits. ...Doesn't exactly carry the same weight, does it?" They both laughed. Pressing a kiss to Leonard's palm, Jim grew serious.

"Next time… don't hide everything from me. I need to know if you're not okay."

"Hopefully there won't ever be a next time," Leonard huffed. "You handled all the medical stuff pretty well, though. You even did CPR and everything. I'm impressed."

"God, I  _hated_  that. I hate it about as much as you hate flying, so I guess we're even," Jim said, shuddering. Leonard glared at him a bit lopsidedly, as the eyebrow he automatically raised was above the eye covered by the medical patch.

"Even?! I became a human lightning rod for you!" he protested.

"Well you shouldn't have, but I admit, that was a brilliant move and I wish I would've thought of it first," Jim said. "I don't know why it never occurred to me."

"Well I've always been the brains of this outfit. Sorry to break it to ya, but you're just the looks, Jim." The captain gaped at Leonard in protest.

"I can be smart  _and_ have perfect hair, okay? Don't discriminate." A slow, sneaky grin broke across Jim's handsome face.

"...Uh-oh, now what?" Leonard asked, sweating. It was never a good sign when Jim had that look.

"I'm gonna have to give you a commendation, you know that."

"Are you serious?!"

"Dead serious. Bones… like I said after you told me you rescued me from the shuttle… you were valiant." He pecked Leonard on the lips. "And I am so grateful..." their lips briefly met again, "that you're okay." They settled into a deep kiss, Jim's tongue completing a lazy circuit of Leonard's mouth that gave him tingles. Leonard wrapped his arms around Jim's back and clutched at his tunic, drawing him closer. Licking his way into the intimate heat beyond Jim's lips, he sampled every slick surface, savoring his intoxicating taste. The rest of the world was forgotten and there was only the pulse of their hearts throbbing in tandem underneath all the other euphoric sensations of being alive, together- and not simply living, but finally living with no regrets. Neither of them noticed the sound of approaching footsteps or the curtain being pulled back until it was too late.

"Dr. McCoy, are you doing all right?" asked one of the overnight nurses. "Your vitals are-" she halted in her tracks.

Leonard and Jim froze, Jim's teeth still tugging on Leonard's bottom lip. He pulled off and straightened, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Uh…" Leonard began, turning every shade of red that existed in the known universe. "Nurse Jeon, I'm fine, thanks."

The petite young nurse continued staring back and forth between them, then blurted, "Visiting hours are over, Captain."

"-Seeing as how I'm the captain," Jim began with a swagger, but the nurse shook her head.

"Medical protocol overrides the captain's demands." She gave Leonard a slightly nervous look, as if she were reticent to challenge Jim's authority, but held firm anyways. "That's something you told us to enforce, Doctor. And you need your rest." Leonard smiled ruefully at the irony. She did have a point.

"Right. Well. Thanks for checking up on me, Jim." He nodded at the captain. Patting his arm, Jim said, "I'll see you tomorrow," and winked. Leonard watched his retreating form for as long as he could, feeling a pang of loneliness. It was stupid, but for the past few days they had been so isolated and co-dependent that it felt strange to be without Jim.

"Well, well, well," said Nurse Jeon. "Now I see why he has that reputation."

"What reputation?" Leonard asked, in a poor attempt at playing dumb.

"Oh, you know, as a playboy. He's broken more than a few hearts around here. But it's obvious the reason he could never commit to anyone else was because he was waiting for you." She giggled and covered up a broad smile.

"Obvious to everyone but me," grumbled Leonard. "Anyways, don't you go around gossiping to the staff about this. That would be highly unprofessional."

The dark-haired nurse looked over her shoulder and said in a low voice, "About as unprofessional as the pool Nurse Chapel has going with the rest of sickbay about whether you and the captain will ever end up together? Looks like she's gonna finally collect her payout tomorrow."

"What?!" Leonard exclaimed, flabbergasted, "My love life is not something to wager on! I'm a doctor, not a racehorse!"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically this is not quite the end- there's gonna be an epilogue.
> 
> This story mainly came about because I was writing a McKirk academy fic and it became sooooo terribly long that I got frustrated that there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel. I had a couple ideas I came up with along the way that I ultimately decided not to use in the academy fic and wondered if it would just be better to see if I could take those ideas and condense the essence of the academy fic into something shorter. I may still post the academy fic someday (if I ever finish it) so if there are any similarities between the two stories, now you know why.
> 
> Stardust on my Sleeve Soundtrack:
> 
> Starlight by Muse  
> From the album Black Holes and Revelations, 2006
> 
> One Life Stand by Hot Chip  
> From the album One Life Stand, 2010


End file.
